


In the Deep, Dark Woods

by thesubparpirate



Series: The Changeling Duology [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Changeling!Draco, Creature Draco Malfoy, Fae & Fairies, HP: EWE, Hogwarts Era, M/M, Memory Loss, Powerful Draco, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-10-22 12:06:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10696677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesubparpirate/pseuds/thesubparpirate
Summary: Draco always knew he didn't really belong, but he thought he could ignore it. Now the war is in full tilt and Draco has to make a choice to protect the people he loves most. Whatever decision he makes, it's nothing that won't demand sacrifice.He knows what he'll give up, or at least he thought he did until Saint Potter had to muck everything up. But what other option does he have, really?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks!
> 
> I've been writing this for a while and it's been bouncing around my head for ages, so I have the first few chapters written. I'll try to post fairly regularly, but since I'm in my last year of college, sometimes my schedule may get a little hectic and I've gotta put my work first. Also, this is the first installment of what will probably be a duology: the second part (a working title right now) will probably be called "In the Bright Moonlight", and it'll be centered around Harry set seven years after the Battle of Hogwarts -basically expanding on the little introductory dream right at the beginning of this work, and the plot afterwards. That part is going to be much fluffier, considering the boys will be out of the war and Draco will be a bit more mature, but just as a warning this installment is fairly angsty. 
> 
> This is kind of a new one for me, because Hogwarts Era isn't really my thing, so be gentle if I get anything wrong lol. That being said, this story does muck up a lot of the original from where I kicked it off and onward, but if there's any glaring faults, I'd love some constructive advice.
> 
> Also, I love comments! Give me what you've got. I like knowing that my writing is quality, so I really appreciate hearing what you guys think. 
> 
> Happy reading! :)

It had started with murky dreams, always involving a blurry, ethereal figure. All graceful lines and elegant limbs, the figure he dreamt had blonde hair so fair it looked nearly white, skin so otherworldly pale the delicate blue veins stood out. On anyone else it would have washed them out, but on this person it just made them difficult to look at, as though Harry’s eyes wanted to slide over them. The pink of their lips the only dash of color. Sometimes they were turned up in a beguiling smile, other times twisted in a frown, or bitten by square, white teeth.

This figure had high cheekbones and sharp eyes. Harry felt like he knew him, even though he knew he couldn't remember meeting someone so striking before.

Harry had begun having one particular dream quite often, where he was walking through the woods and stumbled into a strange, raised clearing, so regularly circular it seemed as though someone had created it specifically. This figure, he was always there, perched on a boulder in the middle of the clearing. And every time, once confronted with this figure, he became aware that he was in a dream—but also, paradoxically, that this was very real indeed.

“What is your name?” Harry asked him—in the dreams, he always felt like he could say anything he liked. He knew from the fog of his memory that he may have asked this before, but could never remember the answer.

He was greeted with a sad, tired smile. “Names are funny things. They hold power, don’t they?”

“Do they?”

“Mm.” The figure stretched languidly, bearing his swanlike neck and reaching his long arms high over his head. “I’m not here to talk about names.”

“What are you here for?”

“For you to remember,” was the reply.

“Remember what?”

He pursed his lips. “Technically,” he began slowly. “You’re not supposed to be remembering anything. But here is one of the only places I can speak plainly.”

“So I should be remembering something, then? Where have we met before?”

“Harry,” the blonde man sighed, nimble fingers running through his hair. “You’re so _stupid_ sometimes.” His words were meant to offend, but his voice was fond.

Harry scrunched his brow and wasn’t sure how to react. The way this man interacted with him was so unsettlingly casual. “You know my name.”

“Yes, dashing Hero. I know your name.” The sentences were laced with sarcasm, so potent Harry was surprised he didn’t choke on it.

“If you’re real, and we’ve met before, where can I find you?”

“In any forest,” he began. “In all the bogs. Where nature is Queen we all are her subjects. You tread over, but you must fall under, for skies lie beneath the soil. You may only see one, but there are—many.” The other man cut himself off and grimaced. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Sometimes if I try to talk about this, even in dreams, the magic catches up with me.”

“Magic makes you speak nonsense?” Harry asked, befuddled.

The other man scowled. “It’s riddles, not nonsense. You just need to think about it for a little—but thinking never was one of your abilities, was it, Scarhead?”

Harry scoffed and then laughed in surprise, taken aback. “No one’s called me that before.”

Despite Harry’s mirth, the other man sobered. “I used to.” He sighed and walked to him, touching his shoulder. Peering into his face, he seemed to think hard about something, his grey eyes stormy though his face seemed impassive.

Slowly, he leaned in. And with one last measuring glance into Harry’s eyes, he kissed him.

His lips were soft and they tasted sweet to him, like wine. To Harry, the kiss felt electric, zinging little lightning bolts all throughout his body. His hands reached up automatically to cradle the other man’s head and pull him closer, but he only ended the kiss, whisking himself away just as quickly. As he slipped through Harry's fingers, so did the wisp of something else, not quite a memory—something more basic than that. A twinge, an instinct perhaps, deep within him.

The other man scrutinized Harry with that strangely measuring look, apparently displeased with what he found by the tension in his jaw and the storm still raging in his gaze. “Ah, well,” he said, falsely cavalier, shrugging his shoulders languidly and walking past Harry with nonchalance. “Maybe I’ll get lucky one of these days, hmm?”

“Wait—” Harry tried to stop him, but once he stepped out of the clearing and into the forest, the dream ended. It always ended.

 

_*_

 

Draco’s mother, Narcissa, had been warned about the wily ways of the fair folk. They were tricky, and selfish, and seemed particularly attracted to purebloods and their brood.

She didn’t believe she would ever be their target, however, until the day she met one.

She had left her son for only a few seconds, toddling in the grass near the expansive forest on their property. She had gone to get his blanket, the fuzzy one he’d left on the porch he’d been wailing about. 

When she returned, an impossibly slender, shadowy figure was hunched over him, its spindly arms and jaggedly thin fingers wrapping around his small frame.

“No!” she shrieked, breaking into a run. Her mind went white, blank of everything for the sheer panic, her vision focused on her sweet child, the way he looked wondrously into the face of the shadowed figure, his chubby fingers reaching up curiously. The startling contrast it made, between this plump, ruddy child and the blurry skeletal creature which held him.

“Not my baby!”

But she was too late.

In a fog of magic and darkness, they disappeared. When it cleared, Narcissa saw a small boy lying on the ground, blinking dazedly, his long, pale eyelashes brushing his chubby cheeks, white blonde hair fanned everywhere.

She stopped in front of him and dropped to her knees.

“My baby,” she whispered, staring at him. Her hands were left open and fluttering around the little boy, reluctant to hold him, reluctant to move.

For as much as he looked like her baby, he wasn’t.

She knew how this went. Changelings were false children—carriers from one world to the next, place-marks left by the fae so witches and wizards and muggles alike wouldn’t go barreling through the forest, tearing down tres and digging through ley lines looking for their lost children.

They always died. Maybe it was because the fae weren’t suited to live outside of their forts, laden with magic and saturated with nature. Maybe it was because the parents, sensing something was strange and unfamiliar and disturbingly _wrong_ , no longer cared for their imposter child.

“My baby,” she said again, in horror and anger and rage. The child before her only blinked, confused for the moment. He reached out to her, and when she reared back, he began to wail. The sound was so much like that of her own boy, it nearly shattered her.

They had taken her child. And once the fae took someone, there was never any taking them back.

Rage calcified the place in her heart that her boy had once taken as she resolved to exact her revenge. There was nothing worse to the fae than being compared to those they tormented: to be anything less than fae was to be wretched. And she knew exactly how to torment them back. They’d left him as a present, right in front of her.

They had taken one of hers. So she would take him.

She would take him, and he would make sure that he lived and was hers, and _that_ would be the biggest blight on their record, their ultimate unbecoming, the itch they could never scratch.

She would take him, she would love him, and she would _win_.

And so, she did. And for a while, she was victorious. 

 

_*_

 

He was sixteen, about to turn seventeen. They liked that.

The fae liked sevens.

He knew, because he was one of them.

 

The Queen was beautiful and terrifying. Her eyes were dark as voids, black as pitch. Staring into them was like staring into a pit that led to the center of the world, deep and unending.

There were others in the fae court. Some had hair, black like hers, so dark it seemed to repel the light, so much so it seemed as though the color belonged to a different universe. But their skin, dark as well, was flawless, and their features were beautiful, glowing with health under the moonlight.

Some looked like they could have been Draco’s siblings, his cousins. They may well have been, in everything but what mattered. Silvery-blonde hair, skin so pale it seemed to give off light itself, eyes such a startling shade of washed-out grey or blue that if he glanced at them too quickly, he mistook them for ghosts.

Stranger still were the ones who had red hair, like an alarm, like a fire. He was reminded of the Weasleys immediately. He wondered if they had any fae blood in them, and knew they probably did. Most purebloods did, somewhere. It seemed as though the fae had a taste for old magic, being a manifestation of it themselves. If they weren’t hunting purebloods, they were fucking them.

Maybe Molly Weasley, the fierce woman she was, had managed to do what Narcissa hadn’t—maybe she had managed not only to save her own child, but also the changeling they left behind. Draco had seen her in a rage, her big voice, big mannerisms, big attitude. For such a small woman, she could be terrifying. He had no doubt she had the capability to bully an unsuspecting young fae into submission.

That would account for the twins' strangeness, for certain. The way they were never seen apart. Their magical power, their mischief and penchant for pranks, the way they seemed to know things. Even the way they finished each others’ sentences. Yes, it would account for a lot.

The Queen fixed Draco with a stony regard, drawing him out of his reverie. Bowing before her, he wondered if what he was doing was foolish

But he had no choice. He needed to do this.

His mother had saved him. Now he had to save her.

Many witches and wizards, upon realizing their child was not, in fact, their own, burned the imposter. They branded the baby, or poured boiling water on it, or simply tossed it straight into the flames. The thought was that if it was a truly magical being transfigured into the form of a human child, the threat of such a brutal fate would force it to transfigure itself back into the creature it once was and apparate away. Nobody seemed to realize that the changelings left behind were, in fact, actual infants themselves.

This was done in the hope of deterrence, Draco knew, or of calling a bluff perhaps, the hope that the fae would hear just how brutal humans could be and would return the kidnapped child immediately before the same fate by fire befell others. It never worked, but legends promoted the belief that it did, and many witches and wizards were nothing if not traditional.

Luckily, Narcissa was not as traditional as she seemed. Maybe it was the influence of her exiled sister, calling from the well of her memories. Maybe it was the unhappiness she had in her arranged marriage and her need to rebel against her rigidly strict husband. Maybe it was something else entirely. Draco would never be certain, but what he was certain of was the lengths she had always gone to protect him.

She had helped him, when he was little and sickly and dying, trying to adjust to life devoid of the protective natural magic of the forest, instead surrounded by harsh sunlight and painful metals. She had taken care to remove everything iron from his room, from the house. All the utensils they had were pure silver—both before and after Draco appeared, thankfully. Nothing he could reach was iron, nothing that could hurt him. She kept his room dark during the day, shadowed like the deep forest, and opened the windows to let the moonlight in at night. She put potted plants all around his room, because without their presence he would wail and cry, imprisoned within the mansion away from his beautiful forest.

He was sickly for much of his infancy, into his toddler years. He never ate much. His eyes were often glassy and unfocused, and sleep tended to be elusive. He cried all the time. His father was not in the house often, as if the wails drove him away even more than before. The House Elves refused to hold him, quaking in fear and saying, wide-eyed with earnest pleading, that Mistress Narcissa was making a grave mistake taunting the fae like so, trying to raise one of them as a human. She did not listen to them: she did not care. She would raise him on her own if she had to, and in many ways, she did just that.

Slowly, as he learned to speak sentences and phrases, Narcissa discovered that he had difficulty talking in anything but riddles. She helped him answer questions the way her people wanted them to be answered, taught him how to suppress his inclination to meander and instead be as straightforward as he could.

It was difficult for him.

When he was bored or lonely he made up songs, rhymes, rhythms. He was bored or lonely often as a child, cloistered in the Manor, shielded away from the forest until Narcissa was absolutely sure that he would, no matter what, resist the temptation to enter the wilderness, that craving clawing at the inside of his stomach for the darkness in its depth.

When he was tired he would play with his words, with the sounds of words. He figured it was just one of the many manifestations of his bizarre sort of magic, a different sort from that of humans—though it had taken much time and many realizations to come to this conclusion.

 Riddling became even more difficult an urge to suppress when his father insisted he learn French, because he found that that language, unlike English, was particularly good for rhyming and riddling. It upset his mother, this recurring indication of her failure, but luckily his father didn’t seem to care, as long as he could speak the languages he told him to.

Luckily, his father didn’t seem to care for him much, for if he had he certainly would have noticed odd things about Draco. The way he always poked metals with just the barest tap of his pinky finger before touching them, just in case they were iron. The way he regarded fire as some frightening and spectral malignant entity, how he would shy away from it like a spooked horse and always sit in the seat farthest from the fireplace because he never minded the cold. He never noticed the way Draco’s magic seemed to burst out of him in uncontrollable waves, often ones in tandem with the weather or their environment—the closer he got to wilderness, the more his magic rebelled inside him.

Lucius never noticed the way the forest both tempted and terrified Draco. 

Draco could fly on a broom well, which was good. There was no fear there. He was talented at finding things, a very observant child, which made him well suited for Seeking. That suited both him and Lucious well—he could at least say that his otherwise skinny, pallid son was a talented athlete on the Quidditch pitch.

He learned to hide his strangeness, through the years. It was difficult, with the Forbidden Forest so close—once, in first year, stumbling around with Harry Potter of all people, he’d very nearly been drawn in. He’d been nearly hysterical, trying to find any excuse to leave the Forest as fast as possible. He could practically hear the whispers of the fae, calling him to come. But he hadn’t. Not then.

The fae liked the number eleven, because it was comprised of two of the same number. But they didn’t like it as much as they liked the number sixteen. One and six, after all, made seven. They liked sevens. Their sacred number.

 “Little lost boy,” the Queen said, her voice like rumbling thunder and pattering rain, like the leaves rustling on the trees. “You were one of us, and now you are not, and you may never be. What do you seek?”

Draco bit his tongue, and then let the speech flow freely. He had no reason to restrict the way he talked naturally here. “I seek both for myself and not. Within and without. She who is both protector and needs protecting, as I have been protected and shall become protector.”

“There is a battle,” the Queen said to him. “It will soon become a war.”

“Indeed.”

“The fae do not get involved with the politics of other species. It is what has preserved us.”

“I am not of another species,” Draco retorted. “Yet as you have noted I am not fae, either. Legend has it the fae are immortal within the forests, but only the fae you see fit. I am not and never will be fae you see fit. But is not one who has defeated you fit? I am both and therefore neither, a creature of nothing. Fae and not fae, she has made me something other than what you intended of me. Do you not see? I do not ask for immortality. I give you a chance to redeem yourself”

“Redemption?” her gaze was stony, her tone scornful. “Child, you are but an infant. You know not of what you speak.”

“I know what I am,” he said. “I am my mother’s retribution.”

“And so?”

“She defeated one of the many parts of you. But she cannot defeat that which she has before her. You will protect her,” Draco explained. “You will defy those who wish her harm. She will owe you. And in exchange for this, you will win this sixteen year battle the two of you have fought.”

She considered him with unblinking eyes, the darkness in them like black holes with their own gravitational pull, dragging Draco in and letting nothing escape. Ever.

He hoped she held on, clung to things like gravity, like black holes, like insanity. Because that was the only way he would get what he wanted. That was the only way to keep his mother alive and do what was right, even if doing what was right meant doing something so, so wrong.  

Finally, she spoke.

And so, The Queen won.

 

And nobody knew anything different.

Until someone did.

Harry Potter, that is.


	2. Chapter 2

Draco loved his mother, but he knew too many things about her.

Draco was not Narcissa’s first son, and he never could be the one she wanted; even when she protested that she loved him, which was true, he knew that love was also tempered with bitterness. She said that the fate which had befallen his twin—for that’s what she always called him, his twin, nothing else—was unfortunate, but reassured him that it was not his fault. Because the fault was on the fae, the tricksters of the night, the Good Folk, the Little People, who were neither good nor little, but devious and everywhere—and Draco wasn’t one of them.

This was how he knew he could never be everything she wanted. Because she could not allow herself to see that he was as much them as her. And so she didn’t understand just how the Forest, every forest, any forest pulled to him. She knew, but she didn’t _know_.

She didn’t know of the fairie courts and the full moons and the way they danced, the way he wanted to dance, free, vicious, untamed. Limbs spinning in the moonlight, hair fanning, teeth flashing, with lips red like blood and feet stomping in a frenzy. She didn’t want to know of his impulses, his riddling, his fear of fire and the overwhelming panic he swallowed every time he forced himself to use the floo.

He loved her. She loved him. But it was a complicated love, one that often didn’t come easily.

She loved him, but she could not know him, and probably never would.

He understood her, as much as she let him. He knew she did what she could. Now, it was his turn.

They were fighting for two different things, each of them. One decision would keep him close to her, and the other would rip him away. But it was the only way.

It had to happen like this.

When Dumbledore approached him, he didn’t shy away. He said poor Draco had a hard decision: he knew what the Dark Lord wanted him to do, and he knew what was at stake.  

But his decision was not difficult, because unbeknownst to Dumbledore—or maybe not as unbeknownst as he thought, spying the mysterious twinkle in the old man’s eyes—Draco had the protection of the fae: he was one of their own, now, no longer a blemish for them to obscure but the prodigal son returned home. And being one of them, a trap and a curse perhaps, meant that at least he could free himself from a different sort of doom.

His mother had lost, but she would not lose her life, and that, for Draco, was his ultimate victory. Even the Dark Lord could not cross the fae. Their magic was too raw to even be light or dark, it was simply _there_ and overwhelming in its existence.

That man was many things, deluded, yes, maniacal, certainly: but not stupid. Never stupid. In his entire quest for immortality, he knew better than to approach the fae, and probably never would.

His mother was protected: In exchange, Draco would return to his heritage. His father, distant and unreachable in his ideology, would have to care for himself as he always had before.

Dumbledore’s eyes shone as Draco told him his decision, and Draco recognized the cleverness there, the scheming cunningness that his benign, doddering appearance—one he worked very hard to keep up—obscured.

It made his power invisible. Draco could respect that. He could understand that. Hell, he did that. He had become the Prince of Slytherin house, because if people revered him as a god they couldn’t brand him as the freak he often felt he was, cowering behind a thin veneer of etiquette and snide remarks. 

This man was more manipulative than most, Draco could tell. He could spot an opportunity when it presented itself to him. If not, he wouldn’t have made a sixteen year old boy a spy.

 

_*_

 

It was a few weeks later and Draco was panicking.

They wanted to train him. The fae. They wanted him to start, right then. When the moon was high and the night was pitch they wanted him to go into the forest and begin the process of never returning, a process that couldn’t finish until the end of the war—a process he didn’t want to finish, but his opinions didn’t matter anymore, if they even ever had before.

He didn’t think he could go through with it, even though a part of him that wasn’t crushed by overwhelming anxiety was actually sort of…excited. To see what it would be like, to live in a place he truly belonged, to see all the strength his limbs could carry, to finally release all the pent-up wild magic he had struggled to keep in the flimsy confines of his body for his whole life.

He knew that he had an opportunity some would die for. He knew he was being given a way out. But after everything, he didn’t know if he could take it.

The fae…would expect him to do things. Certain things. Cruel things, brutal things, like the Dark Lord but worse because there would never be an end, because there was no war, only hatred between the species, only the constant jab and dig and trick and prank and kidnapping and murder.  

He wasn’t sure if he could do it. He didn’t know if he could abandon his entire life and become one of them, but then, he couldn’t see himself and his mother die. He hadn’t been raised to be brave. He would do anything, eventually, if it kept him alive and out of Azkaban. He knew this, but it didn’t make the panic attack lessen one bit.

And what of his father? He wasn’t protected in Azkaban, nor so close to the Dark Lord. The fae could only go so far. He could only give so much. To shield someone like his father…that would be considerable. That would be much more than he was worth to the Queen. But he was still his father, and so Draco still worried, still felt he should have been doing more, trying harder to protect him against the Dark Lord.

What a pompous name, the _Dark Lord_. If Draco wasn’t so upset, he might have scoffed. After Draco had met a true Queen and seen the power that sparked within her, just waiting for the wrath that would allow it to spring out, the Dark Lord paled in comparison. But even reduced, he was still a threat. A great one.

He hoped he would be good enough. He hoped he would be enough so no one he cared about would have to die. But it wasn’t something he could predict, and it was overwhelming, and he couldn’t keep it in anymore.

There was nowhere private he could find, and so he found the next best thing. Breaking down in front of Moaning Myrtle might have been embarrassing, but she at least knew what it was like to be isolated. To be silenced, a secret-keeper, even if she wasn’t very good at it.

He was very good at it, and that just made it worse.

And so he hid in a bathroom, the only one he was sure no one would come looking for him in, the only one he knew where the sound of someone’s sorrow would go unnoticed, and cried.

And then, because the Good People were not as good as they claimed, they punished him for it.

 

_*_

 

His wand had not worked properly since going into the forest. His magic was becoming too big, too wild, too much what it should have been, to be able to be captured in a little piece of hawthorn.  He didn’t know why he tried to use it, because he knew that even if he had finished casting the curse, it wouldn’t have worked.

However, Harry’s did.

Harry’s did.

Some of the spell ricocheted off of Draco and onto the walls, shattering mirrors and crushing tiles. The tinkling and boom of mortar and glass filled the bathroom, water gushing from broken faucets.

Just enough ricocheted away, but he still got hit.

He couldn’t tell as he was falling, landing. All he knew was pain, white-hot, coursing through his veins from the slashes on his chest. The dizzying sort of pain, the kind that left him breathless and made his adrenaline spike, the kind that was _so much_ that it almost felt right, almost felt like magic, like euphoria. Almost, but just enough not that he was still there.

Harry was crying.

There was blood on the tiles.

Slashes across his torso, on his cheek. The fire of them, the intrinsic, screaming, writhing wrongness in his mind, knowing it shouldn’t be this way.

And the last thought, right before he passed out:

_There’s seven gashes_.

 

_*_

 

He woke up seven days later.

That’s how he knew it was the fae. It had been Potter’s wand, but the machinations behind everything else had been inhuman.

He had thought as much, when he was dying, when he woke up after that number seven he knew for certain.

He had wavered, and the Queen had punished him. Potter was just a pawn. As he always was, Draco thought tiredly. As they all seemed to be, in some way or another.

Madame Pomfrey had told him what he missed, the days of classes past, the homework that had been left for him, and ushered in the many friends of his that had come in to sit beside his sleeping form and weep desolately (in Pansy’s case, melodramatic as she always was) or rant indignantly (this from Blaise, also dramatic) or simply sit there stoically and scrutinize him (as Theo did—Draco always suspected that Theo knew more than he let on, the smart, sly creature he was. If anyone ever found out about his heritage, he wouldn’t be shocked if it was Theo first).

When his friends weren’t there, he was stuck in the hospital wing with no distractions. He ate his meals in bed, too shaky on his feet to move. His left arm was particularly weak—one of the slashes had cut deep into the meat of his shoulder, so he had to do everything with his right hand. Which would have been fine for most people, but was a practice in patience for Draco: he was naturally left-handed. He hadn’t thought much of it until he’d read in one of his textbooks that most fae were.

Even though his father had trained him to be ambidextrous, in his exhausted state using his bad hand was just too much for him after he’d slaked his thirst and most of his hunger. So he let the food sit, despite Madam Pomfrey’s nagging, and stared out of the window, trying not to think about what else the Queen might send for him before he returned to her the next night he could, if he would heal quickly.

As his heritage revealed itself more and more, curses, hexes and spells would have a diminishing effect on him, until it faded away entirely—like most magical creatures, they had no effect on full-blooded fae: Their own magic cancelled it out. But unfurling this magic from the hidden recesses of his body and mind would take time and careful patience, and that was something he had very little of right then.

The sun was already fading, the candles burning low in their pools of melted wax, throwing strange shadows across the walls. That was when he saw it. Just a flicker of movement, perhaps the wind or something else, just in the corner by the door. Perhaps it was nothing. But then it happened again.

Panic shot through him. _They can’t make it to the castle,_ he thought. _It’s too far from the forest._

He hoped.

“Hello?” he whispered quietly, as though the softer he spoke, the more likely this whole thing would not be real. He couldn’t speak much louder anyway even if he tried—his voice was rusty from disuse, and even that small sound made his head pound.

There was a shuffling sound just next to him, and Draco stiffened, looking wildly for his wand placed on the bedside table. Even though it did not work well anymore—old habits died hard.

“Shh,” a voice said, and then in one swift motion and the rustling of cloth, Harry Potter emerged at his bedside, his glasses knocked sideways and his hair even messier than usual.

He folded the shimmery cloak over his arm, straightening his specs and shaking out his hair like a dog. Draco watched him, suspicious and surprised, though not too surprised. He supposed the boy’s sense of honor compelled him to _talk_ to his victims after a thorough beating, though if Potter was just a pawn of the Queen, perhaps Draco was being a bit harsh. 

“I knew there had to be a way you could sneak around without getting caught,” Draco muttered, his eyes fixed on the flickering fabric.

“Yeah…” Harry began, shuffling awkwardly. He felt out of place looming over Draco’s bed, especially when the other boy looked so tired and worn, so he pulled a stool over and sat beside him.

Harry didn’t look much better, to be honest. There were rings around his eyes and lines on his forehead and between his dark eyebrows. He looked like he would have fallen over had he not chosen the stool.

“Are you here to gloat?” Draco sighed. “Because if so, I really don’t think I can tolerate that quite yet.” He stared away from him, picturing himself alone. Hoping Potter would just leave him be, to stew in his own humiliation. “You’ve won.”

“I didn’t _want_ to—” Harry protested vehemently, his voice louder than he intended, realizing it when he cut himself off and peering over his shoulder at Pomfrey’s closed door. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he whispered fiercely, clutching his cloak between his hands so hard that his fingers began to turn white. “I didn’t know what the spell did. I’m sorry, Malfoy.”

His eyes shot open. He side-eyed Harry suspiciously. “Is this a joke of some sort?” Perhaps a changeling had kidnapped Potter and taken his place. That was the only reasonable explanation for why Potter would ever actually _apologize_ to him.

“No!” he argued, his green eyes intense and earnest. “I swear I’m not. Merlin, you almost _died_ , Malfoy, that was—I wouldn’t—” he cut off, pressing his knuckles to his worried lips.

Draco sighed again. “Your eloquence is astonishing as always, Potter,” he drawled, his eyes drooping shut, head lolling back onto the pillows. “I’m tired.”

“Yeah, yeah—alright. I get that.” But still, he lingered.

Draco lifted a tired, sardonic eyebrow. “You’re not waiting for me to forgive you, are you?”

“No…” Harry said. He shook his head, tugging his hair. “No. I’ll go. Forget this happened,” he muttered, standing up and throwing the cloak over him. “I wasn’t here.”

His footsteps dissipated, and Draco took a deep breath, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers lightly to his lids.

What did Potter think he was accomplishing?

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Draco received letters from his mother immediately after she knew of his condition. Letters upon letters. Every time he responded, another one was sent immediately back to him, seeking reassurance.

Unlike him, she didn’t think it was the fae. She didn’t know enough to think that—in her mind, that war was long since won and she had claimed him as irrevocably her own. She thought it was Potter, just Potter, that he was going on a witch hunt to weed out anyone who might support the Dark Lord—and Draco, of course, was a convenient target.

She was angry. She wanted something to be done. But of course, nothing would, not against Saint Potter, and she was angry about that too. The best that could be done was to put a positive spin on it, to inform the Dark Lord that Draco had done something deserving of glory, had tracked down Potter and dueled with him like a true Death Eater, albeit a stupid one.

With considerable difficulty, Draco rolled up the sleeve on his left arm and stared at the pale, unblemished skin. When he went home, he knew the Dark Lord would try to brand him, honor him for standing up for him against the Golden Boy. He hoped that at that point his inheritance would come in enough to counteract it, that the burn, though there at the start, would just fade away as his own magic built.

He hoped.

Pansy showed up during the day, alongside Blaise, Theo, Vin and Greg. Vin and Greg, not surprisingly, had nothing much more to contribute than an “Alright, Draco?”.

They weren’t very verbose people, naturally. That was the reason Draco had become close with them, in fact: Narcissa had arranged play dates secretly hoping that that quality would rub off on her son—better a quiet child than a rambling, riddling one. No one could question his sanity if he seemed simply shy, rather than mad.

Pansy brought him more of his homework, so at least he wouldn’t get bored while on bed rest—a joke, albeit a bad one. The three of them were surprisingly kind (and Draco thought that Vin and Greg looked like they were trying to simulate actual emotion, though it seemed to be causing them great pain), though Pansy had all sorts of scathing things to say about Potter. Most of them, Draco agreed with, though he knew he shouldn’t have. He was just manipulated by the fae magic: how else could he have found him, crying alone in a room everyone in their rightful minds avoided? Still, rationality couldn’t help quell the surge of bitterness Draco felt, and Potter was simply an easy target.

The more they talked, however, the more he could feel his overwhelm burgeoning again. After all, he hadn’t even gotten to finish his breakdown those many days ago, and now he felt like he just had so much more to cry about.

He mostly slept. He would have liked to do his homework, to alleviate just a little bit of the stress that constantly plagued him, but he felt he’d reached a saturation point. There was no farther place his mind could go to in order to stop worrying, and so he just started to feel as though, in that moment, nothing mattered more than just closing his eyes and letting himself float away.

When he woke up again, it was the middle of the night and he felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck, the kind he always got when someone was watching him.

Harry was sitting on the stool next to him, looking at him in surprise, one hand close to his own chest and the other poised, hesitantly, just near Draco’s shoulder.

“Well _that’s_ not creepy,” the blond drawled, staring at him.

“I—” Harry swallowed. “I wasn’t sure if I should wake you or not.”

“So you can apologize again?”

“Yeah, that.”

“The great Savior, begging for forgiveness,” Draco muttered. “Why do you even care? I’m just Slytherin, miniature Death Eater scum to you.”

“You’re a person,” Harry argued. “I’ve never—I’ve never hurt anyone like that before, I—I just need to make sure…” His eyebrows were drawn close together and he was worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, his hands clasped tightly and drawn into him, the picture of remorse.

“Stop that,” Draco said dismissively, though he was a bit alarmed. “Stop that right now, before you make yourself vomit. If you sick up on me I’ll _definitely_ never forgive you.”

“I’m not going to,” Harry protested.

“No, but you will if you keep looking so consternated. Go back to bed, Potter.”

He considered him. “I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

“I might not be here tomorrow night.”

Harry looked him up and down doubtfully. “Can you even walk?”

“Of course I can,” Draco sniffed.

“Have you tried?” Harry asked cautiously.

“I can walk,” Draco repeated with gritted teeth.

Harry hesitated, but shrugged. “If you say so. If not, though, I’ll be here.”

And then he disappeared again, leaving Draco alone.

He let out a breath, one he felt like he’d been holding the whole conversation.

He knew he couldn’t walk yet.

 

_*_

 

Harry came back the next night. And the next night. And the next night after that.

Every night, Draco threatened to disappear the next. Harry seemed to think it was a running joke, and though he personally didn’t find much humor in it he played along. But for Draco it was very much not a joke—the Queen would be getting restless. He knew he had to visit her soon. And so every day he tried a little more, and then a little more. The first day he could hardly stand up without immediately collapsing back into bed, but soon enough, he started to feel confident.

Draco didn’t know why Harry kept coming in, no matter what he said. They’d always hated each other. Nearly dying didn’t make up for years of animosity.

He couldn’t take it, finally.

“You can stop coming now,” he said wearily one night when Harry appeared by his bedside. “I forgive you. The pity party is over.”

Harry was quiet for a long time, but eventually he asked, “Are you just saying it because you want me to leave? Or do you really mean that?”

“It doesn’t matter, Potter. I said it. That should be enough.”

Harry just shook his head. “I…I can’t do that, no.”

Draco sighed, an angry, huffy thing. “What, after all this you require _sincerity_ , too? You can’t make anything easy.”

A lopsided grin worked its way slowly across his face, just barely visible in the darkness. “Yeah, I guess so.”

When Harry visited the next night, Draco wasn’t there.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

Draco plodded back towards the castle with mud on his boots and leaves in his hair, not making a sound. The sun was just barely rising, and even the songbirds seemed muted and sleepy.

For someone who had only just regained the ability to walk far distances, he felt energized in a jittery sort of way. His chest still ached, but unlike the constant, persistent soreness of the past week, this pain was dull. The Forest invigorated him. Though he was still terrified of the Good Folk, he was, ultimately, one of them. Or going to be once again, very soon. The Queen wanted him, and she got what she wanted. Draco had given that to her.

He couldn’t talk about it any farther than that, or even think about it too hard. The fae lived in a place out of time, suspended away from normal human’s paradigm. Talking inspired riddles. Legillimency inspired an even more confusing barrage of pictures, light and sound: outside of the Forest, he could never put into words what truly happened inside, though he could remember it well enough as himself. There were certain protections the fae had. Ones that had kept them hidden for thousands of years. This was one of them.

As he approached the shadow of the castle, every step he took seemed to lag. The wild magic of the Forest called him, and his own magic, drowsy and just partially awakened, wanted to answer. But he had a job to do. And he would finish it.

 He returned to his room as the sun was stained the curtains. He washed his hair and body, wiping the dirt and grime from his skin and from under his nails. He watched it swirl down the drain, washed away with the water, as his memories of the night started to blur and trickle away with it.

He went to the Great Hall for breakfast before the other Slytherins. He’d taken to avoiding the rest of his house since the start of sixth year: at first, it was because of the pressure, because of his father, because of the Dark Lord. Then it became because of the fae, because of Dumbledore, because of the spying. He couldn’t afford to stay close to anyone anymore. Though of course, Blaise, Pansy and Theo were wise enough to know what he was doing, and tried to counterbalance it as best they could. Vin and Greg just kind of tried their best, a little lost behind the rest of them.

They never asked him to explain, but Draco had to try to keep this distance because he had a job to do—it was a tired excuse that he hated, but used anyway because it was more than just an excuse, it was a truth.

A few others were in the Hall, but not many. He preferred it that way. He drank a mug of tea, and then one of strong coffee—Merlin, but he was tired away from the Forest. He could practically feel the bags forming under his eyes. Maybe he should have just gone back to the infirmary, instead of going to the dungeons. But he’d wanted a bit of familiarity, to wash his hair with the shampoo he liked, to put on his own clothes, ones that he’d picked out for himself. After all that wild magic, he’d needed to feel like _himself_ again, rather than the creature he would eventually become.

Picking halfheartedly at his plate of scrambled eggs and toast, he sighed before standing up and draining his mug of the last of his coffee. He still had to go back to the infirmary and get his homework, and he knew he’d have hell to pay from Madam Pomfrey for sneaking out. She might even make him stay for another day, and he really couldn’t afford to lie in bed any more. It may have been good for his body, but it certainly wasn’t dong his mind any favors, left to stew without any distraction save for occasional visits from his friends or Harry in the middle of the night.

On his way back to the hospital wing, passing by an unoccupied classroom, he felt a hand clap on his shoulder and whirled around.

“Hey, hey! It’s just me,” Harry said, hands up in surrender as Draco leveled his wand right at his chest.

Draco scowled. “What the hell are you doing, Potter?”

Harry glanced around, looking to see if any of the few bleary students stumbling down the hall noticed them. “You weren’t in the infirmary last night,” he said in a lowered voice, tugging him into the classroom.

“I told you,” Draco said. “You haven’t _crippled_ me, Potter. I can still walk.”

“Yes, but you…” Harry blinked, seemingly looking at him properly for the first time since starting this conversation. “Well, you look much better now than you did two nights ago, actually.”

Draco scowled and raised an eyebrow. He tried to keep the panic off of his face—there was nothing to be done about the Forest having positive effects on his health. Of course it would. He was a fae. And now he had to accept it. If he had been in the Forest when he got hit, it may have only taken a few days to wake up instead of a week. It may not have hurt him at all.

He knew this, but it still hurt to have someone else acknowledge it.

“Yes, well, I’m fine. If that’s all, I really must be off—”

“Wait—wait. Malfoy—Draco—”

His eyes flashed. “It’s Malfoy, Potter.”

Harry huffed in frustration. “ _Malfoy_ —just, if you, I dunno. I mean. I can try to help, if you need it. Or. Um.”

Draco reared back, appalled. “ _Excuse_ me?”

“You have nightmares,” Harry said in a breath. “I can guess what they were about. I’m just saying. You don’t have to be alone.”

Draco shuddered, turning his face to avoid the blush of humiliation that was creeping up his cheeks and neck. _He watched me have nightmares._ His mind’s eye flashed back to the night he’d turned over to see Potter, hesitant to shake him awake. _How pathetic must I have been, for him to be offering this?_ “You can guess, but that’s all. I don’t need your help.”

“I know you haven’t been spending as much time with your friends. I know you’re isolated. If you’d just _talk_ —we can go to Dumbledore—”

 _“Ridiculous_ ,” Draco spat, though he himself had gone to Dumbledore just weeks ago. The fewer people who knew about that, the better. He didn’t have his inheritance yet—the Dark Lord could still kill him easily if he wanted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve forgiven you, Potter. Quiet your savior complex, for once in your life. I’m beyond it.”

“No,” Harry said, shaking his head, but Draco was already leaving—and he let him go.

 

_*_

 

“Harry, why do you keep pestering him?” Hermione asked exhaustedly that night, finally looking up from one of her many textbooks, her wand shoved behind her ear and her curls completely out of control, springing away from her bun.

“I swear, he’s up to something.” Harry was staring at the Map, all pretense of studying pushed aside. He watched Draco’s little footprints, completely still in the Slytherin dungeons. “He looked half dead a few nights ago, and now this morning he looks completely revived—I checked the map last night and he wasn’t in Hogwarts at all. He must be doing something Dark.”

“I know, Harry—but how is that your problem _right now_? After all that’s happened between the two of you, don’t you think you should probably stay away from him?”

“Probably, but…Hermione, that’s just it, you know? The fact that I did that? That’s _why_ it’s my problem. What if the accident has sent him straight to Voldemort? What if he does something crazy, what if he joins up and gets the Mark and brings dementors into Hosmede or something ridiculous like that because he’s afraid I’ll cut him open again?”

“That’s not your fault—”

“It kind of is, Hermione, yeah!” Harry’s voice had a hysterical edge to it. It was so _stupid_ of him to use that curse, he’d only been curious and then when he’d heard the _Crucio_ on Draco’s lips he’d just reacted with the first thing that came to his mind. And now he was responsible for the backlash, he knew—how could a person not be responsible after nearly cutting someone open on a bathroom floor?

“Malfoy is a big boy,” she said, taking her wand out from behind her ear and twirling it in her fingers. “He can make his own decisions.  If they’re wrong, so be it. You have enough to worry about, Harry. Just leave him alone.”

Harry sighed and slumped in his seat, tilting his head back to stare at the far ceiling but eventually nodding in acquiescence. It seemed to satisfy Hermione, though Harry didn’t intend to follow it through.

That night, when Draco’s footprints started to move, so did Harry.

 

_*_

 

With every step towards the Forest, Draco felt more and more energy seep into his bones. Every breath was easier. Every step was lighter. He no longer felt the pain in his chest, but he could feel the thrum of his magic coursing through his veins. It called to him. It _called_ to him. And every time he answered it, it got stronger.

He didn’t know if he could keep this up until war broke out. He didn’t know how long he could pretend for his parents’ sakes. Now that his mother’s protection was secure, he was really only keeping up the façade for his father’s sake. And if he already knew _he_ wasn’t going to die—which he wasn’t, not unless the Dark Lord set Greyback on him, because Death Eaters would rather die than use any sort of muggle weapon—he might as well use his particular position to influence the side he wanted to win. Those were his two reasons for staying. But in the face of the Forest, they were just so _flimsy_ —

He felt a hand on his arm and whirled around. He had his wand out, but the length of hawthorn was made for conducting the small charge of magic a human could produce, not the surge that a magical creature could. It was a good thing he recognized the face beside him quickly enough to stop himself, or his magic would have blasted his wand to bits and probably flung Potter halfway back to the castle. And then he _really_ would have convinced everyone where his loyalties lay.

“Potter!” Draco yelled hoarsely, his voice caught in his throat, vying for space with his pounding heart. “What the hell?”

“What’re you doing out here?” Harry asked.

“What’re _you_ doing out here?” Draco shot back.

“Following you,” Harry admitted sheepishly. For all his bad manners, he at least had the good graces to look embarrassed.

 _“Why?”_ Draco’s voice was practically a whine. He could feel the pull of the forest so close, it almost hurt him not to take those last few steps into it. His magic was rising too high within him, he felt like he couldn’t control it unless he moved, and he didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to return to the castle. Much as he wanted to fight it, the fort of the fae was becoming less strange to him with every visit—still just as monstrous, in many ways, and he knew the Queen had not yet even asked anything of him. But this world was monstrous, too, and he struggled to feel whole here. There, at least he belonged a little more, even if they had left him for dead. Even if no one cared about him there like his mother did, his mother was what mattered—and now that he’d ensured her safety, perhaps he could make these people see his worth, though he shuddered to think of the cost. His humanity, most certainly. But the power he could have…that was enticing indeed.

The same such power, now, that was driving him mad, sending shivers down his spine, making his head swim and his eyes lose focus.

“If you’re doing something Dark in there—”

“You have no idea what I’m doing in there, Potter.”

“Yes, but you don’t have to do it! Whatever it is! I want to help you!”

“But _why_?” Draco stepped right to his face, and Harry, the stubborn git he was, refused to move. So Draco shoved him. “Why do you want to help me, Potter? Does your heart bleed for me? Does your savior complex crumble and wither at the sight of someone you might—not—be able to—reach?” With each word, another minute shove backwards. Harry let himself be pushed, but his green eyes blazed back at Draco, full of fire and determination.

“Because you don’t have to do this, because you’re more than just some tool, you’re a person! You can make a damn choice!”

“And what if I’ve already made my choice?” Draco sneered. “What then, Potter?”

“Then I’ll follow you,” Harry said, licking his lips and straightening his shoulders. “Whatever you’re doing, you can’t stop me. I’ll keep following you until I find out.”

 _Shit_ , Draco thought fiercely. _Shit, shit, shit._ If the fae ever got their hands on the Chosen One, it would be complete chaos. The Queen would have a field day. Time moved funnily in the forts—Harry would only feel like he was there for a few minutes, and he would come out, and the war would be over and it’d be fifty years in the future. Or it would spit him back a hundred years before he was born. They would make changelings of him, just to mess with the wizarding world the way they loved to once they got their claws into someone, they’d feed him the food and drink that everyone thought trapped you there (it was a lie—that was never the intention. The fae just needed to eat. If their food acted as a highly addictive depressant and aphrodisiac to the human body, that was just a perk for them. Easier to mess with people that way.)

“You can’t.”

The Golden Boy’s jaw was set. “I will.”

“No, I mean you _can’t_ ,” Draco said severely. “You’ll get everyone killed, you bloody idiot!”

“Then I guess you have an easy choice to make.”

“You fucking _bastard_!” Draco wanted to scream. The Forest was _right there_. It wanted him _so bad_. His magic was compelling him so much it was almost painful, and he could feel tears prick his eyes in frustration. The Queen would not be pleased. This was too much. It all was too much.

Draco turned away from Harry, trying to take deep, even breathes. Each inhale shook.

“Malfoy—”

“Don’t touch me, you bloody git, just let me think.”

In the end, there wasn’t much of a choice to make. Just like there never was.

Draco trudged back to the castle, a part of him withering with every step.


	5. Chapter 5

Dumbledore had told him that Harry and the Dark Lord were connected mentally. Which meant he had to tread softly here. It was even more important that he not reveal anything about the fae to Harry, if he had a madman rifling through his memories.

Which meant that he’d have to let Harry believe he was doing Dark Magic in the Forest, and _that_ meant tolerating the arsehole following him everywhere in an attempt to stop him.

“How do you always find me?” Draco asked, exasperated, when Harry walked out from behind a statue. “Are _you_ doing Dark Magic? Blood spells? Have a bit of my hair put into a voodoo doll, hmm?”

“You waft pompous git wherever you go,” Harry retorted. “Makes my job pretty easy.”

“Your _job_ is to go to class and be the favorite child of the wizarding world, not trailing me all day.”

Harry shrugged. “I go to class.”

“Not enough, apparently,” Draco muttered, rolling his eyes. “I’m going to the library, to read about how to curse puppies and stew babies for my Worshipping the Dark Arts class. Feel free to join me, though you may be a bit out of your depth.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm, but Harry didn’t rise to it.

“I think I will,” he replied, suppressing a smile when he heard Draco huff irritably.  


_*_

 

So that became the new normal, for a while. Draco would try to go somewhere that wasn’t class or the Slytherin dungeons, and Potter was there to accompany him. The first few times they screamed at each other and steamed in silence, side by side but refusing to look at one another. Then it became awkward and uncomfortable, two people who were more than strangers but less than friends shoved together. And then, somehow, miraculously, it became sort of…companionable. Draco wouldn’t call them friends. But he didn’t think they were enemies anymore, either. Harry could even be sort of funny, when he tried. He’d made Draco genuinely laugh more than once, before he caught himself and looked utterly horrified. But Harry had a nice smile, the rare times he showed it to Draco. And even though he was scruffy and unkempt, some part of Draco couldn’t help but think he was attractive—and the crackling magical aura around Harry boosted the credibility of that small part immensely. Draco had always been drawn to power. That was where most of his problems stemmed from.

The Queen was getting restless, and Draco knew he’d have to shake Harry soon. Strange blood magic or no. He resolved, after all this was done, to figure out how Potter always managed to find him—he would never tell.

He’d seen the looks Harry had been giving him. And Draco knew the rumors were flying around school: Harry and the girl Weasley had broken up, right around the same time he had begun following Draco. He had a hunch, one he wasn’t sure he should latch onto.

But if he was right, he might just manage to get Harry to trust him enough to let him go. And if he was wrong, well, maybe that would get Harry away fom him long enough to do it anyway. Maybe he’d be so horrified he’d never follow Draco again. Either way, it was worth a shot—though the second option made Draco’s stomach twist in unpleasant ways he didn’t like the think about.

Draco was running out of time, so it was the only shot he had.

 

_*_

 

“You’re very quiet today,” Harry remarked, side-eyeing him as they walked down the halls. “No energy for insults?”

Draco shook his head, preoccupied. Should he do this? Should he really do this? He figured whatever he chose, it would be less stressful than the decision to approach the Queen, so at least he had that going for him. It didn’t really help his anxiety in the moment, however, with his head swirling of the Queen and the Dark Lord and Dumbledore and his mum and father, all muddled together.

So many expectations. So many responsibilities. He just wanted to forget about it, just for a little while.

And that thought, right there, is what made him grab Harry’s elbow and haul him into an empty classroom, throwing the door closed behind them.

“Wha—” Harry began, confused.

“Shut up,” Draco said, and kissed him.

Harry tensed for a moment when Draco’s lips touched his, and Draco thought perhaps he’d been wrong after all, and Harry would push him away, yell and scream maybe, insults, profanities, whatever. The thought made his stomach clench, and he very nearly turned away and ran out the door because of it.

Just as Draco started to back away, Harry grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him close and kissing him twice as hard. His lips were insistent and demanding, his tongue hot, his fingers twisting through his hair roughly—he was everything Draco had thought he would be.

Pressed against Harry’s lips, Draco couldn’t help but smile.

This was what he’d hoped for.

Until, that is, Potter pushed him away. His eyes were wide and unfocused behind his glasses, his hand flying to his mouth.

And then, without a word, he ran out the door.

Draco felt something small break inside of him.

The room was too quiet.

Alone, Draco heard his own ragged breathing in his ears and took deep breaths, trying valiantly to calm himself and failing miserably.

Harry’s shocked face flashed before his eyes, followed by the Queen’s impossibly deep, imperious stare. The Dark Lord’s menacing glower. His father’s disapproving sneer.

 _Don’t cry_ , he thought fervently as tears slipped silently from between his lashes. He shook with the effort of keeping them in, his hands balled into fists at his side, nails digging into his palms. He sank his teeth into his bottom lip and screwed his eyes shut.

_Don’t cry._


	6. Chapter 6

Harry stopped following him. That was the good thing.

He’d gone into the Forest twice without him. That was a good thing because it staved off the Queen and slaked his cravings. It was a bad thing because he could feel the ever increasing pull of it, and felt himself being lost. It was a bad thing because the Queen had something in mind for him, and he didn’t think he would like it. Some revelry the fae enjoyed, some celebration that wrote mischief and woe for others. The Queen played a long game, Draco knew. She almost always did, because time meant nothing in the forts. A year was a minute, was a second, was a lifetime. It was everything and nothing. It simply didn’t matter.

He worried what it was.

He worried that with every step into the forest, he was losing not only himself, but his humanity. His morals. The ones his mother had so painstakingly taught him.

Honor and pride, independence and grace. Cunning and ambition, intelligence and resourcefulness. Compassion. Love.

Would this war strip him down bare? Would it reduce him to the creature he might once have become?

Draco stopped eating. Every time he smelled food, his stomach rebelled.

He stopped sleeping. He just stared at the walls of his room, listening to his roommates sleep. He wondered when the Dark Lord would call him to get the Mark. He wondered how that, too, would change him.

He wondered what the Dark Lord would do to him once he got it. If he got it. If he passed his tests.

Draco had talked to Dumbledore, talked to Severus.

He had to pass his tests, or he had to submit to the Queen. One had to be first.

Though in different ways, he knew with either choice, he’d be irreparably damaged.

 

_*_

 

Draco was late, on his way to Arithmancy. His classes just couldn’t keep his interest anymore—who needed to know calculations and formulas when they were going to be living in timeless, forested limbo for the rest of their lives at best, or not have a life at all at worst? He kept up with classes because otherwise people would start suspecting things, but that was all. It was no surprise to him when a warning owl came to him, telling him he was failing three classes. Before this year, he’d never gotten anything other than perfect grades. Now, nothing seemed to matter.

He was lost in his mind when someone grabbed Draco roughly by the elbow, covering his mouth and dragging him into a darkened closet before he could cry out.

The little crack of light from the hall did nothing to illuminate the figure before him, pressed close in the cramped confines of the closet. His heart racing in his chest, he didn’t know—

“Malfoy,” came a voice next to his ear, one he knew. He shoved the other boy back, reaching for the doorknob.

“Fuck off, Potter,” he spat venomously. He didn’t want to deal with this now. _I only did it to get him to leave_ , he thought bitterly. _I didn’t want anything else._

He needed to leave. He _needed_ to leave.

A strong arm fell between him and the door before he could reach it, and he felt Harry’s body cornering him against the wall.

“Get off,” he growled. Potter was just going to tell him off for being a prat, for kissing him when he didn’t want to be kissed. He might even hex him here, where no one could see. He didn’t want, he couldn’t deal, it was all too _much_ and so many people expected so many things from him, he couldn’t—he just couldn’t _do it_ anymore…

He gritted his teeth and screwed his eyes shut against the sob that caught in his throat, and that was when he felt Harry’s lips on his own. The sensation was enough to make him gasp, and then Harry’s tongue was in his mouth, kissing him even more fiercely.

Draco didn’t know what to do, so he did nothing, standing still in shock against the wall. The kiss ended quickly without Draco’s response, something Harry obviously hadn’t anticipated.

 “I shouldn’t have run away,” Harry said, staying close. Draco, his eyes adjusted to the darkness, looked into Harry’s face, just barely able to make out the outlines of his spectacles.

He shook his head and shoved past him, unbalancing the other boy and nearly making him fall flat on his arse.

“You’re right,” he retorted, enunciating every single crisp consonant the way his mother did when she was furious. He opened the closet door to let in a flood of light, walking down the hallway fast, as if Harry was going to follow him.

He didn’t. 

 

_*_

 

The second time Harry cornered him, Draco was in the library. This went much like the first time, with less kissing, but equal amounts of talking, and even more frustration.

“I need to explain—”

“You need to get the hell out of my space. I am _working_ , Potter. Fuck off.”

“Just let me—”

“ _Leave_.”

“But you—”

“Ugh!” Draco swept his things into his arms, knocking over his inkwell to shatter and stain the floor. He didn’t care.

He walked to Harry, stepping close and bullying him into one of the bookshelves, their noses almost touching. “Stay. _Away from me_ ,” he hissed, and shoved him as he walked past, making a few books fall on top of Harry’s head.

 

_*_

 

The third time Harry cornered him, Draco was in an unfortunately vulnerable state. Luckily, this instance ended much differently than the one before, or all of Draco’s bargains might have been for naught.

He had just received a letter from Mother. She wanted him to come back to the Manor for a few days. The Dark Lord wanted to go over the specifications of his assignments, and the ramifications of what would happen if he didn’t fulfill them.

He hadn’t seen the Queen enough that week, trying to stave her off in an effort to preserve the scraps of himself he clung to, and she was becoming restless. She sent beetles to come out of the drainpipes during his showers, worms to slither out of the sinks. In herbology, the plants seemed to target him, lashing out with sharp, coiling vines and spiky leaves. The rats scratched at the walls near him, ran between his feet and tripped him in the halls.

She was displeased, he knew. Ever since coming to her, she had never been pleased. And he didn’t know what she would make him do for it once he fully became hers.

He was mystified, really, at how he’d managed to hold off a panic attack for so long.

He’d been unable to get out of bed after reading that letter, his mind so occupied that his body simply refused to move. Blaise had tried to coax him out, but Theo had stopped him with a look, and he knew they’d be whispering about him later. He lay in bed for hours, doing nothing but staring at the wall, trying not to think.

Because when he thought, all the bad things came crashing back. As they did when he was trying to get himself ready, and made the grave mistake of glancing in the mirror.

He used to take pride in his appearance, but now he hated it. He had always looked a little strange, with his coloring—though his parents always had too, which made him think that he wasn’t the first changeling to be inducted into the Malfoy clan. He had looked regal, he thought, if a bit pinched. But now it was so much worse.

His eyes scanned the tightness of his cracked lips, the shadows underneath his cheekbones that hadn’t been there before, the bruises under his eyes pooling brownish-purple. His hair was limp and scraggly. And his eyes were bloodshot and watery, the grey in it less like the steel he remembered and more like a blurry drizzle.

His eyes were what kicked it off.

It started with the shaking he couldn’t control. Tremors up and down his limbs, so violent his teeth clacked together. His breathing became erratic, unable to inhale past the massive lump in his constricting throat. His vision became blurry, though from stress or tears he couldn’t be sure.

He balled himself up in the corner, knees drawn into his chest, his face hidden in his arms. He shook quietly but like an earthquake, feeling like everything he’d been trying to balance so precariously was tumbling down around him and he was helpless, so helpless…

Adrenaline coursed through his veins with nowhere to go. Everything within him was screaming to move, to run, to get away, but he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. _He couldn’t_ _breathe._ He felt like he was going to pass out. The room was spinning, his vision was tunneling, splotches of red and black smeared across everything.

There was someone beside him. A warm hand on his shoulder, pulling him into a solid chest. One arm wrapped around him, pulling him into this other person’s lap. One hand carded through his hair as he made soothing, shushing noises.

“Breathe,” the other person said. “Feel my chest, my breathing—just do the same.” He pressed Draco’s ear to his chest, and Draco latched onto his inhale and exhale, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat underneath it all something to focus on. Slowly, after minutes or eons, the splotches began to disappear from his vision, and his throat opened back up little by little. He wasn’t entirely calm, yet, but calm enough to recognize who was there with him.

Harry rubbed his shoulder gently, trying to get Draco to stop shaking. “It’s alright,” he murmured. “You’re alright.”

Draco sighed wearily and managed to shake his head slightly. “What’re you doing here?” he rasped, exhausted.

“You weren’t in class,” Harry said, still speaking softly. Draco felt him shrug. “I went looking.”

“Why?” Draco felt exhausted, his eyes grainy and gluey, his head pounding. He just wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep forever.

Harry smoothed down Draco’s hair. “I’m sure you can guess.”

“How did you get here?”

“I’ve been to the Slytherin dorms before,” he answered. “Well, never the bedrooms, but I’ve been to the common room before.”

Draco scowled. “You have?” he looked up at him, their faces far too close. Draco shoved himself out of his lap, stumbling gracelessly onto the floor and picking himself up with a glower. “I don’t want to know, actually,” he grumbled. “Just leave.”

Harry hesitated, still on the floor. His eyes scanned Draco’s face, cheeks still too pale, his eyes still too red. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. Just go.” Draco brushed his fringe out of his eyes and straightened his shirt. “I don’t require you here any longer.”

“I could stay—” Harry started, his fingers brushing Draco’s arm. He was cut off by a glare hot enough to melt metal and a resounding _smack_ to the back of his hand.

“Get out,” Draco said through gritted teeth.

Harry nodded. “Alright,” he said quietly, picking himself up to go, tossing his invisibility cloak over one arm. Draco thought that would be it, but Harry paused in front of him, grabbed the back of his head, and pressed a swift, not quite gentle but not quite rough kiss to his lips. He gave him a pointed look.

“I’ll see you soon,” Harry said, and shut the door behind him as Draco stared after him.

Amidst the jumble of emotions he felt, attraction, wounded pride, shame, bitterness, fear…there was anger. A dark, smoldering thing.

The next kiss they shared, it was Draco who pulled Harry into the darkened closet. And when he kissed him, it wasn’t gentle at all.


	7. Chapter 7

 

At the start of it, it was just fucking.

Draco was jumpy. Harry was restless. It was a way for them to forget about all the festering shit in their lives, if only for a little while.

It was hard and fast and rough and _awkward_. They both were inexperienced—apparently saving the world left no time for the Chosen One to have some adult fun, and with Draco’s upbringing, to have sex before marriage was worse than murder. He should know. His father, after all, was a murderer.

Draco tried not to think of it in terms of virginity—he’d had the concept so pounded into his head since before he hit puberty, and he carried the weight of all the shame and defilement that went with disobeying something that was, at the end of the day, just a social construct—but he knew he was a broken thing anyway. It didn’t matter how his father’s voice railed against his deeds in his head. He had already lost every other part of himself. There was already no hope for him, and if there was a hell he was already living it, so he may as well have his small victories where he could find them. And this last, small victory was giving the last bit of himself to a person who truly deserved it, a person he wanted to give it to.

Draco took that shame and ate it. He had more than enough on his plate and more than enough reasons to hate himself without dealing with this, too. So he refused to feel it, and instead scratched his nails down Harry’s back, trying to leave marks. He bit down on his shoulder, on his earlobe, hard enough to make him yelp. He pushed Harry into walls and shoved him into closets, and Harry bent him over desks and pinned his wrists above him.

It was anger and attraction, all rage and lust. Nothing was considerate. They needed to work out their issues, and this, they’d implicitly decided, was the best way to do it.

It was just fucking. And if only Potter didn’t have to start fucking _caring_ , that could have been all it was.

 

_*_

 

 “Just trust me,” Draco implored, exasperated. “Honestly, Potter.”

They had a routine, simply to sneak away to secluded rooms when they could. It wasn’t anything nicer than it was: there was no tenderness that could have softened it. Or at least, that’s what it used to be, Draco supposed with discomfort gnawing at his gut.

They didn’t talk about it, but it wasn’t as rough as it used to be. The bruises on Draco’s hips and wrists weren’t as dark. Harry kissed him more. He said his name, his first name, though Draco still refused to call Harry anything but Potter. It still wasn’t in a bed—Draco refused to share his _bed_ with him—but it was on everything else.

Draco thought Harry would be meaner than he was. He expected to feel hatred and bitterness in his kiss. He expected to be loathed, to see it in his face when they passed in the hall, to hear it in his voice when they talked. That was the only proper way for the Golden Boy and the Death Eater’s Son to interact.

But Harry never gave him his hatred. All he got was eagerness, desperation. And maybe… somehow… affection, as well.

Draco was the mean one. Of course he was—it was what everyone expected him to be. Why stop all pretenses now? He was angry and bitter and railing against his fate in the only way he knew how, the only way that wouldn’t get everyone killed.

He didn’t kiss with openness; trusting wasn’t in his nature. Anger was. Fear was. Frustration definitely was.

 “I can’t—”

“You _can_ ,” Draco said. “You have to. They’ll suspect something otherwise. They’ll…” Draco drifted off, biting his lip and taking a deep breath, unable to look Harry in the face. “They’ll do things, Harry.” This was the first time he’d used Harry’s first name, and he wasn’t sure how it was going to go. He used it because he thought Harry wanted to hear it, but he apprehensively watched the emotions flicker across Harry’s face, surprise, suspicion, hesitation and frustration.

“We can talk to Dumbledore—”

“I’ve already done that, you dolt.” If the Dark Lord asked, he could say he was just trying to win Harry’s trust. He was a good enough Occlumens that he wouldn’t be able to rift through any of Draco’s memories he didn’t want him to see. “He knows what I’m doing.” _Well, part of it._

“He does?”

“ _Yes_ , and you’re impeding it greatly.” Draco rubbed at the spot between his eyebrows, feeling strung out and desperate. “They’ll get angry.”

“Voldemort?” Harry asked, and Draco flinched. A lifetime of training took a lot to wear off, even if he had met greater powers.

“No,” Draco muttered, shaking his head. “Others.” He was trying to be as honest as he could with what he had. He had enough to deal with—he didn’t need to be chasing down any more lies than necessary.

Harry was scowling, his fingers tightening on Draco’s arms. “You shouldn’t be seeing them.”

“Yes, well, _Potter_ , not many of us have your _sparkling_ reputation, so we must make do with the tools we’re given.”

“Will they hurt you?”

“Would you care?”

Harry spluttered. “I—Would you— _of course_ I would care.”

“Really?” Ridiculous Gryffindor nobility, that. “I wouldn’t have thought that.” _Not after what Myrtle saw, especially._

Harry’s thick brows drew down low, an ugly frown marring his face. “Do you really think I’m so horrible?”

Draco shuffled his feet. “I don’t really know what to think of you.”

Harry scrutinized him for a beat more and opened his mouth, hesitating. “Will they hurt you?” he repeated.

Draco shrugged cavalierly. “Probably not.”

“I’d prefer a more solid answer.”

“Well, you’re not going to get one,” Draco retorted, his tone sharp in warning. “But if you keep me away from them any longer, they definitely will.”

Harry huffed, frustrated.

Draco knew that couldn’t be the end of it, and it wasn’t. They fought until they screamed. Draco could practically feel the back of his throat tearing as he yelled.

But eventually, he convinced him. Using his first name helped.

Also, becoming so panicked when he began to lose the argument that he could hardly contain tears helped. Harry didn’t like seeing people cry—he didn’t deal well with that particular emotion. The frustration and anger was still there when he saw that Draco was close to having another attack, but it became irrelevant, in that moment. He gathered Draco in his arms and held him close, imploring him breathe in deep, to stop hyperventilating, to not cry.

Of course, that was a bit too much of a blow to Draco’s pride—how dare Potter try to console him when he was distraught, even if he really did want to be comforted. He straightened his arms and held him away from him, blinking hard and taking deep, steadying breaths, covering his eyes with one hand.

“Just stay away,” he finally said. “Just let me do this.”

For once, Harry didn’t argue.

 

_*_

 

“Are there a lot of them there?” Harry asked one night, the night after Draco had gone to the forest. They’d agreed to meet in the Room of Hidden Things, seeing as it was a safer spot than the abandoned classrooms they’d been frequenting—no chance of Filch discovering them here or of Peeves proclaiming their presence to the student body. Draco found it ironic, as he was surely becoming just another hidden thing himself. "In the Forest?”

Draco snorted. “Don’t worry yourself,” he said. “They won’t do anything, not with Dumbledore around.” The fact that they were talking about two different groups was irrelevant. Draco was just happy he’d managed not to make a riddle out of it.

“Who are they?”

Draco shook his head, afraid to open his mouth. He hurriedly kissed Harry before he could ask any more, before rhymes and nonsense could fall from his lips.

Harry made a surprised, appreciative sound and kissed him back. Though when they parted he said, “I know what you’re doing.”

Draco shrugged and smirked. “You aren’t stopping me.”

Harry kissed him again. “No,” he said against his mouth. “M’not.”

The Room had given them plush couches to sit on, with heaps of pillows and blankets and plenty of lit lamps and candles to see with. It wasn’t that large of a space, but it was cozy.

If it was a little too nice for Draco, uncomfortably more intimate than a desk to be bent over or a wall to be pressed into, he didn’t mention it.

Draco was trying to forget the Forest’s calls again, losing himself in Harry instead. If he had this to come back to, he thought that he could do it, at least for a little while more. Especially if Harry kept doing that with his tongue. And the way his fingers skimmed Draco’s sensitive spine, all the way down and all the way back up, sending fireworks through him.

He was amazed, really, at what this had become. What was originally conceived as a slapdash plan to get him off his back had actually turned into something…pleasant. He would have never guessed that spending time with Harry could actually be characterized as that. He supposed all that fire and brimstone was building up to something. And he was certain, at least on his side of things, that most of his anger at Harry had been displaced from the anger at his father, at his family, at his situation—and Harry, who so bluntly rejected his offer of friendship so many years ago, with his ridiculous hair and scrawny frame, with just that frustrating _something_ Draco could never let go of, had been a perfectly good target.

Until he wasn’t anymore.

“You look better today,” Harry said. “Healthier.” He paused, his fingers moving over the lines of Draco’s face, to his cheeks, his lips, his eyebrows. “They’re not…doing anything to you?”

“Like what?” Draco snorted. “Poisoning me? Giving me the antidote every time I see them? Yeah, that’s just the Dark Lord’s style, to sicken all of his loyal acolytes. He’ll just get that horrendous snake of his to bite me on the thigh, and then I’ll be his forever. No Dark Mark needed.”

Harry scowled but said nothing, his fingers brushing Draco’s fringe out of his eyes. “You haven’t looked well recently.”

“Have you been keeping tabs on my health, Madame Pomfrey?” Draco tried to keep his tone light, but it wasn’t working.

Harry didn’t answer.

Draco rolled his eyes and tried to move away, but Harry held him close. “I’m fine, Potter. Stop asking about it.”

Harry’s hands ran up and down Draco’s back. Draco could feel him building up to asking something in the tension in the air.

“Will you get it?” Harry blurted eventually. “The Mark?”

Draco pursed his lips. “Not if I can help it.”

Harry shook his head, scowling, and released Draco. “We can help you—you shouldn’t be doing so much on your own.”

“If not me, who else, Potter?” he retorted. “Who else is willing to do all this shit?”

“That’s not the point,” Harry protested.

“Of course it’s the point!” Draco argued. “I have no _choice_!”

“You always have a choice!”

“Of what?” Draco asked. “Equally shitty options? I stay, get branded, torture a few people and hopefully escape Azkaban because I’m betraying everything I was raised with? Or I leave and let the Dark Lord kill both of my parents, let the Death Eaters hunt me until they torture me to death? What kind of a choice is that?”

“That won’t happen!”

“Why? Because _you’ll_ protect me?” Draco sneered. “You need to start protecting yourself, Potty. I’m not a project for you to work on.”

“ _Stop it!_ ” Harry exclaimed. “God, you’re so infuriating—”

“Why?” Draco asked, egging him on and unable to stop himself. “Because I’m not as idealistic as your little group of Gryffindors? Because I _know_ what’s going to happen? Because nothing is ever going to end well and you argue because you know it too? What, Potter, what is it?”

“Shut up!” Accidental magic crackled through the room, searing the walls and the ceiling. Draco started at the burst, looking wide-eyed around the room at the smoking scorch marks. Harry was breathing heavily. “Just shut up,” he protested again, weakly. Draco watched him run his hands through his hair roughly, unable to look at him.

“It’s what’s going to happen,” Draco said wearily. With a self-deprecating smirk, he added, “I’m doomed, Scarhead.”

Harry shook his head from where he rested it in his hands. “Stop,” he protested. “Just stop, Malfoy.”

Draco frowned at the use of his last name but didn't comment on it. “I’m not your responsibility,” he said instead, staring at the wall. “You don’t have to take care of me just because you sliced me up a little.” That was the only conclusion he could come up with for why Harry’s feelings switched from animosity to something resembling affection so rapidly. It had to be guilt. That wasn’t the emotion Draco had hoped for—he honestly wasn’t sure which emotion he had been hoping for—but for this little while, at least, it would work. If he was going to condemn himself to a lifetime or more of inhuman treachery and wickedness, he may as well have his small victories where he could take them, before it all went to hell.

Harry took in a swift breath. “I’d rather not talk about that,” he said.

Draco shrugged nonchalantly and fluidly stood. “Whatever you like. I have to go.” He wanted some time alone, and Harry was more tiresome than he was worth, at the moment.

Harry let him.

 

_*_

 

Draco huddled in his bedroom, clutching his burnt forearm to his stomach. The pain had been excruciating, getting the Mark, and the ceremony, horrifying. He could still feel the snake twisting and squirming beneath his skin, alive by dark magic. He could feel it wreath and shriek against the force of his magical being, and knew that eventually, it would wither and die, taking the dead, black skin with it into non-existence. Before that happened though, it would suffer, and it would make Draco suffer alongside it.

Burning hot and freezing cold, he could never get comfortable. His brain felt like it was boiling in his skull. His thoughts were muddled, his dreams, incomprehensible. He was occasionally aware of a terrible noise echoing through the room, and sometimes, in his most coherent moments, he could realize it was coming from his own mouth.

His room was warded and locked from the inside, the only people able to open it himself and his mother. Not even his father was allowed inside anymore—though they loved him, somewhere deep inside them, they were also wary of him and what he was willing to do to stay in the Dark Lord’s good graces. Greyback had a taste for the innocent, and though Draco had not been that for a long, long while, he was still nearly a child. He was more innocent than anyone else in that house. And because of this, he was a target, and had to take the necessary precautions against that.

His mother came in and out, bringing him soup or cold packs of calming draughts. She changed the salves and dressings on his burn, on the Mark. If it looked like it was shrinking, she didn’t comment on it.

She knew the transformation she’d always dreaded was happening to her son: nothing else could have erased the Mark as it was happening. It was a change she’d tried to prevent all his life. She didn’t know why it was happening now—maybe as adults, fae had even more magic than as infants. Maybe it was the forest calling him. Maybe it was the stress of war, and Draco had given up, deciding he’d rather be inhuman than continue fighting for a cause he did not believe in.

Whatever it was, Narcissa was losing, and she knew it. It was in the way her son moved with otherworldly elegance, like a dancer on a stage. It was in the shine of his eyes, ethereally pale and bright, and in the bloodlessness of his cheeks. His fine bones became more prominent every day he spent locked in the walls of the Manor, dropping weight rapidly, looking emaciated. She was sure she could easily count his ribs and fretted about sending him back to Hogwarts alone, though she knew any time away from the Dark Lord was good for him.

His complexion became sicklier, as it had been when he was very small. His eyes were underscored with crescents of deep purple no matter how much he slept. His hair was thin, wispy and breakable. In between bouts of the fever brought on from the ceremony, he would mumble gibberish, random nonsense and strings of rhyming verse that she did not understand.

To anyone else, it would have seemed that Draco was going insane. To her, he was just reverting back to the way he’d always meant to be.

She redid the wrappings on his arm and brushed his sweaty hair out of his face, leaning over and giving him a kiss on his forehead.

“I love you, darling,” she said, hoping he was coherent enough to understand her. Because even though he wasn’t hers by blood, he was hers by everything else that mattered. She could see that it was too late to fight this change. She knew it was too late to fight many of the mistakes she’d made, unsure of where she’d gone astray along the way. She could only hold fast to what she’d done before and hope to ride the future out without sustaining too much damage through the turbulent times ahead.

Losing her son would be a blow. One she wasn’t sure she could tolerate. But she would continue, if only for the vain hope that one day he would come back, even though they never did.

She tucked the blanket up around his shivering form. He was getting to be so tall, if only he had more weight on him, if only he were well. He could have been such a handsome boy, such a handsome _man_ , if only their lives were different.

She squeezed his good hand, bringing it up to her lips for a kiss. Her fingers trailing across his skin, she left his room, shutting the door with a firm _click_ , feeling the locks and wards slip back into place.

It wouldn’t be long now.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks a turning point for this story, and Draco has a lot of emotions about it, so I apologize in advance for the angst! I'm a sucker for fluff, so there will be some eventually, if that helps ease the blow at all.

 

Though every day seemed to drag that year, the weeks flew by. Sixth year flew much faster than Draco planned. As the summer of his seventeenth birthday came, Draco knew it would take the rest of his humanity with it as it went.

He and Harry had continued meeting, up until school ended. Each time, Draco became more urgent, more demanding—he knew it was unhealthy to be so escapist, but he _needed_ to escape, and if he couldn’t do so physically, at least he could mentally for a small while.

Each time, he knew he was giving Harry too much, but each time Harry accepted it. At first, he’d thought nothing of it, and in fact responded similarly—the Boy Who Lived had a lot on his mind, too, no doubt. Draco couldn’t imagine. He thought it must have been nice for Harry, though, knowing he was on the right side of things. That was a luxury Draco was never afforded.

They went slow until they didn’t. It was just a quick fuck until it wasn’t. The breathless noise Harry made when Draco took him into his mouth, or the feel of Harry’s lips bruising his neck, the sensation of finally allowing himself to be conquered, or of actually willingly and trustingly submitting to someone and something else for the first time in his life—it built into something different

He hadn’t meant to get attached, but he could deal with it. He knew their relationship had an expiration date. He knew that this was temporary. That he was temporary.

But Harry didn’t, and he couldn’t tell him. He could see the terrible, beautiful things in Harry’s face, in the way he held him, in the way first they fucked, then they had sex, then they did something so startlingly close to making love that Draco couldn’t think about it without feeling a tightness in his chest and profound worry gnawing at his gut.

That was why, when the end of the year came, Draco did nothing different. There were no dramatic goodbyes, no tears, no professions of what might have been burgeoning love.

Harry was none the wiser, and Draco willed himself not to think about what this was, what it would have to be. When they kissed, it was heady and desperate. Draco pushed Harry back, and back, and back, until they were lying on the couch of the Room of Requirement. Draco pored over Harry’s skin, kissing every inch, every freckle, every scar and imperfection. He shivered as he felt Harry’s hands, as searing hot as his mouth and tongue, slide over him.

He went down, down, down, until he was tugging off Harry’s trousers, leaving open-mouthed kisses to his hipbones, thighs, licking stripes everywhere but where Harry wanted most. Draco loved the noises he made, the low, sexy rasp of his voice, the impatience in his tone when he told him to “Hurry up, come on, Draco, for god’s sake just—” and the little gasp when Draco did what he was told.

He loved doing this, knowing it was him who unraveled Harry, knowing that he was in control. But when Harry’s fingers fisted in his hair and tugged him away and up, clumsy through the haze of attraction, he went easily.

Harry crushed their mouths together, all heat and intensity. Draco knew Harry could taste himself on his lips, knew he liked doing so, knowing he had had Draco in that way. He ran one hand gently down Draco’s spine in just that way that made him arch and gasp, putting a self-satisfied smirk on his smug face every time.

Stilling his hand at the small of his back and one strong hand cradling Draco’s head, Harry flipped them over and pressed him into the pillows, his elbows on either side of Draco’s face. If anyone else had tried to be as close, to loom over him and corner him in so tightly, he would have been anxious, maybe even try to fight. But with Harry it was different. With Harry, like this, he felt protected—even though he knew he wasn’t, knew none of them were.

Harry kissed him gently, on his lips, his cheeks, his forehead. He left open-mouthed, purple stains across Draco’s neck, the kind Draco thought he did because he liked seeing them there as they lay together afterwards, and knowing they remained under the glamour during the day.

Harry made his way slowly down Draco’s torso, pausing at the waistband of his trousers and laving his tongue in all sorts of tantalizing ways until Draco was so aroused he was nearly incoherent.

When Harry prepared him and finally pushed into him, it was slow, measured, and even. Draco could tell by his labored breathing that this was a difficult feat to achieve for Harry, hindered rather than helped by Draco’s persistent fingers and breathless, shaking demands.

Harry buried his face in Draco’s neck and Draco felt him, all of him, over and over. He was falling apart in the most exquisite sort of ecstasy—but he was torn to shreds by the sadness, the worry and fear he couldn’t let go of.

Harry felt Draco’s breathing hitch and shudder in his throat. He lifted his head and stilled, suddenly, shockingly aware of the pain on Draco’s face and the unshed tears pooled in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately, anxiety and guilt a cold, hard weight in his stomach. He moved away as swiftly and as gently as he could, saying all the while, “Oh, god, I’m sorry, shh, I’ll—”

“Stop,” Draco ordered him, his fingers gripping his shoulders, pulling him back towards him. His voice was thin and wavered, and the words were difficult to choke out, but his conviction was strong. “Stay.” He wrapped his arms around Harry’s neck firmly.

Harry swallowed hard, brushing Draco’s fringe away from his eyes, searching his face. He looked as though he was about to say no, to tell him they shouldn’t do this now, not like this, not when Draco so obviously needed something else—but then he caught sight of Draco’s desperate, bloodshot eyes, and he hesitated.

“I didn’t hurt you?” he asked instead, his voice riddled with concern. His eyes darted to the topmost scar on Draco’s torso, stopping just below his collarbones, and his lips thinned into a tight, white line.

Draco shook his head, lifting a hand up to stroke the side of Harry’s cheek and to bring him back up to face Draco.

“Please, Harry,” he whispered, vulnerability plain in his tone, in his gaze. In a breath, he repeated, “Please.”

It was the first time he’d ever pleaded with him. And after that, despite his mounting worry, Harry didn’t really have any choice but to oblige him. He continued more carefully than before, went slower, more tenderly, until Draco’s scratching nails and rough voice urged him to get on with it.

Oblivion was a slow, building thing. It crashed over Harry first, then Draco a time after like a wave to the shore, whisking him away with the tide. If a tear slipped down his cheeks when Harry’s name slipped from his lips, neither said anything about it.

Draco drifted through the haze afterwards in Harry’s arms, floating, unfeeling, above himself. Harry stroked his back and carded through his hair, pressing him close.

“Let us protect you,” he begged him, cradling Draco’s head to his chest as though if he just held him there long enough, he would be safe. “Please. We have a safe-house, you can live there—you and your mother both, I promise.” Harry could feel Draco shaking his head and felt his helpless frustration mount. “Why _not_?” he asked exasperatedly, emotion making his chest tight. “Please, Draco, come with us.”

Draco removed his head from Harry’s chest and kissed him, keeping his eyes closed all the while. He didn’t like to think about what he’d agree to if he had to look into those eyes. Nuzzling back into his neck, he shook his head once again.

“We all have jobs to do,” he replied quietly, subdued. “I have to do mine.”

Harry knew what he meant, and he felt compelled to argue, though he himself often felt like a puppet on a string. But Draco was stubborn, and emotional, and exhausted—he would leave it until the next time. There was still a few weeks left of the school year, after all.

They stayed like that, lying side by side and wrapped around each other, for a long while. Eventually, Harry picked himself up, leaning in to peck Draco on the lips and putting on his things. He didn’t want to stay too late, lest Ron and Hermione worry.

Draco felt the last of him die when he saw Harry smile that last time, the kindness in his eyes mixing with the worry and sadness he always seemed to carry now. It was a weight Draco would never be able to help alleviate again.

He memorized Harry’s back as he watched him walk away.

After he left, Draco allowed himself to truly cry for the first time since the fae had used Harry to punish him, so many months ago. He thought maybe they’d never stopped using Harry to hurt him; they’d just changed the means.

It took a long, long time for the sobs to quiet.

Unlike Harry, he knew there wouldn’t be another chance.

That night was when he left.

 

_*_

 

The night of his departure, his mother was standing on the porch, staring into the forest and the half-moon above it. The sky was clear and the constellations were visible—everything looked so peaceful on the outside, the sky, the wood, his mother—all concealing endless turmoil.

She was illuminated by the moon, her hair turned silvery white, her eyes solemn. She looked very much like one of the people Draco was about to renounce her for, and it made his heart ache. He didn’t want to leave her—he loved her so. But that was exactly why he had to go.

She could see the resoluteness in his face and refused to let him see her cry. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and each noted how thin and frail the other was. War had not treated either of them well.

She clutched him to her, hard, and he hugged her back equally. When she drew back, his fingers tightened around her, and it became difficult for him to breathe.

 _Mummy,_ the desperate child inside of him cried, tears welling in his eyes. _Mummy, don’t leave me—I love you, don’t leave me!_

His face cradled in her hands, she whispered, “I love you, sweetheart,” and he released a sob.

She held him as he cried into her shoulder. “I love you, Mum,” he choked out. “I’m sor—sorry…I—I…”

“Shhh,” she whispered, carding her fingers through his hair, smoothing it down, wiping the tears off his cheeks. She clamped down on the emotion welling in her chest. She would be strong for her son. He needed her one last time. She would not let him down as she so obviously had before. 

“You need to do this, darling.” She kissed his tear-streaked cheeks. “Go, now, Draco. I love you now and forever, but even I can see that you can’t stay here.”

“I—I don’t—want to leave you—!”

“You’ll come back to me,” she said resolutely, one hand on his shoulder, the other cradling his head. “One day, we’ll find each other again.”

Her thumb stroked the side of his face. Staring into her eyes, after time and time again of deep breaths and uneven breathing, Draco managed finally to regain control of himself.

“I love you, Mum,” he whispered fiercely.

She nodded. “I love you too, baby,” she replied, gently turning him away, the hand on his back prompting him to the forest. “Go, sweetheart. Go now.”

Draco did. And though his breath came in ragged gasps and salty tears dripped down his face, he didn’t look back.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks!
> 
> Before this chapter starts I just want to give out a warning. In this chapter, Draco feels very lost and alone, and completely separated from his life. He's confused and angry, and so what happens next is a manifestation of that confusion and anger and sadness. I felt as though in this situation Draco would try impulsively to force himself away from his past life, and so in this short chapter Draco is briefly with someone who isn't Harry. I don't intend on making it any sort of romantic relationship,and both parties implicitly understand that if they weren't in the forts, this wouldn't be happening.
> 
> I intend to keep her around though, as a sort of friend and mentor for Draco (because of course, H/D is the endgame). I felt as though having him go alone at all of this would be way too much pressure, and so I wanted to create a support for him, even if she only is one person. She'll become fairly integral to the plot later on, though again not in any romantic way. 
> 
> Thanks for keeping with me! I know this is sort of a strange story, but it's been one that I've been stuck on for a while, so I wanted to write it just to see how it would go. And comments are much appreciated - I'd love to hear what you all think!
> 
> Happy reading!

Deep in the forest of Wiltshire, far from the legions of the Dark Lord, deeper even than Greyback dared venture, Draco received his inheritance. He sat at the Queen’s table, hewn straight from living trees. He ate and drank with them, danced with them, sung and spun with them in the light of the moon. At the end of the night, the Queen kissed him with lips red as ruby and skin dark as midnight, and he was hers, inhuman, unreachable.

The Dark Lord would never again make him torture anyone. Crazy Aunt Bella would never _Crucio_ him again, screaming her mad laughter in his ear, speaking her violence with spit flying in his face.

He wouldn’t have to kill anyone in Lord Voldemort’s name. But he might have to in the Queen’s.

He wondered if he’d made a fair trade. After all, the things the Queen wanted were hardly better than the Dark Lord. Many of them might be worse. The only difference was his came from concentrated maliciousness and focused evil, and hers came from a delight in destruction on whole.  

The fae had a reputation as being mischievous and conniving, beautiful and deadly. But they stayed so secluded within their own worlds, many of them could not stray outside the forest. Draco knew he would become like them eventually, only able to venture to the outskirts when keeping to forms that weren’t naturally his own, taking silhouettes like mice or squirrels or birds.

But for now, it was Draco’s job to lead people astray, to confound them right into the forest, to seduce them to the forts. Among other things, of course. Everyone was victim to the Queen’s whims, in the fort. It was her realm. Where blood and beauty reigned.

Draco met one other like him, someone who had come to the forts seeking to make a bargain. She was a beautiful redheaded woman, with curls that rivaled Granger’s. She danced with him, that first, intoxicating night. They kissed, like everyone did. Gender was no matter for the fae—drunk off the ceremony of the night, drugged by the power of the ancient rituals they participated in, summoning the ancient magics which formed the fae and structured their society, everyone fell in love with everyone else for a few haunting hours.

It was glorious, powerful, savage and brilliant, what they did that night. She raked her nails down the skin of his chest, leaving stark red streaks across the pale skin. He trailed kisses across her neck, her skin tacky with her sweat and his spit, and blue-purple blotches blossomed across her throat and collarbones. His need overwhelmed him, and though it wasn’t for her, that was of little matter. Her scent was a strange mix of sweet and spicy, and nothing at all like Harry.

He couldn’t think about Harry. He could think of nothing but Harry.

He thought about his wild hair and intense eyes. How he kissed, gentler than Draco thought possible. He thought about his callused hands and his smudged glasses and the confident, determined way he carried himself. How he caressed Draco’s face and smoothed back his hair and worshipped his body and seemed to _care_ , really and truly, and that was why Draco could never have him.

He could never have anything so good. 

This girl, this stunning woman, was above him, on top of him, her curly red hair falling in curtains around his face. With her, nothing was gentle—everything was hard, fast, and fierce. She was angry. She was furious, filled with boiling rage at being taken away, of seeing another taken away as well, of being powerless in the face of power and knowing there was nothing she could do about it.

She was angry. But so was he.

It festered in his stomach, the helpless rage, the intensity. It grounded him. It drove him to kiss harder and hold her tighter, as if by immersing himself in her, he could escape the fire of shame and guilt and fury that threatened to engulf him.

He was with her in body, but elsewhere in mind. And she knew. Because she was, too.

“It’s alright to think about them,” she whispered in his ear, biting down gently on his lobe and sucking on the sensitive skin just behind it. “I think about them too.”

“Do you ever stop missing them?” Draco asked in a breath, staring at the cloudy sky, afraid of the answer.

She pulled back and scrutinized him with hazel eyes so unlike Harry’s. She opened her mouth like she was about to answer, and seemed to decide against it, instead kissing him fiercely, enough to bruise. Their teeth clinked together. Her hands fisted in his hair, tugging. And when she released him, pressing her forehead into his, he could see the answer in her eyes.

“Fuck me harder,” she breathed instead.

There was no compassion to be found here. The higher they got the more Draco could feel his humanity slipping away.

She was beautiful, he knew.  It hurt to look at her.

She was everything he had to have, and nothing he wanted.

Arching and twisting and throwing her head back, she came before him, those curls bouncing and catching the light, shining a deep red and gold. She was stunning. 

He tumbled after her some minutes afterwards, his eyes closed, shut off from the gorgeous woman in front of him and instead enraptured by someone else. Someone with those beautiful eyes, that ridiculous hair, those rough but gentle hands. Someone he couldn’t think about anymore, but did anyway.  

She understood. He understood that she hadn’t been thinking of him, either. And that was just so lonely that Draco could feel it pulling at his chest.

For a time, they laid together on the forest floor. Then she gave him a quick kiss, gathered her things, and disappeared between the trees.

Alone on the cold ground, feeling bereft and adrift without anyone or anything he had known before to anchor him, Draco felt nothing but numbness.

He did not know how long he stayed there, only that the sun never came up.

But then, time was different in the fort.

He had to get used to that.


	10. Chapter 10

Wandering the woods, Draco felt the pull of strong magic. Space, like time, meant nothing to the fae, so long as the space was natural. And right now, in the nothingness that now ever was, someone was there. It was Draco’s job to find them.

Draco wandered through the trees out of the fort, wondering where he was going, who he would meet. The magic, it felt familiar. It was big magic, from a powerful being, and he was always drawn to power. It didn’t feel viscous or slimy, not wholly at least, and unlike that of dark magic—being now fae himself, he could sense these sort of things, the lingering wrongness of dark magic like the sensation of a broken bone, the visceral _it’s not supposed to be this way_ , the instinctual knowledge that something was most certainly not right. 

It was not magic of the woods. It was magic of a person, he was certain. Which poor soul had unwittingly walked into the forest, unknowingly putting their fate in Draco’s hands?

Who he brought back depended on the Queen’s whims. Sometimes it was young men and women, seeking adventure, and he would bring them to dance with the fae in the moon. They would eat their food and drink their wine, and they would get so intoxicated, so enchanted, that many danced until they simply dropped, and lay prone in a drugged haze on the forest floor to be trampled by the enraptured masses of the forts.  Some survived, if they were resilient, but not many. The fae did not care who lived or died: death was not the point—the experience was.

In the aftermath, as the forest grew over the bodies and the roots took hold of the dead in the middle of the night this disturbed Draco. The remainder of his humanness cried out in shock and horror. But the fae side of him rejoiced in the revelry, in the bright light of the moon and the urgent, freeing way the wooded dance floor propelled him in and out of others’ arms, the movement never stopping, an orgy of blood, of sex, of violence. It was unnatural and so incredibly natural, both at once.

Sometimes the Queen sent him to beguile the vulnerable stumbling near the forest’s edge, the drunk, the drugged, the lonely. He would promise them things, companionship, or sex, or love, and they would follow him. These people, they never returned. At least, not to where they came from. As they followed his retreating figure into the forest, space and time became meaningless. They would always find themselves turned about, unable to locate the handsome young man they’d followed. And then the forest would spit them out somewhere new, a few months or years or a century later, to find that they’d disappeared. That their youthful lover was now over eighty years old. That their family had aged and died without them. How could they ever return?

Draco didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all.

The one flaw was that he could not yet shape-shift, as all fae could. It was his attachment to his humanity that stopped him, the knowledge that if he were going to take this step over the line, he would never be himself again. To be a bird, or a deer, or a wolf—that would truly be something, he imagined. And it wasn’t just other species he would be able to become—the fae could take any shape most desirable to lure their prey. But he wasn’t ready to do it yet. He clung to the vestiges of his humanity with all his might, diminishing though his strength was.

Sometimes the Queen would send him out to greet those who had willingly and purposefully ventured into the forest. Those who had come to make a deal, as Draco had. He was fae and not fae, and his unique status had granted him a court directly with the Queen. But others were not, and they therefore were relegated to her lackeys.

Many came to him, some stoic, some terrified, some tearful. Sometimes they were people from the era of the Black Plague, begging him to spare their lives in a trade for their service. Sometimes they were from the famine of the 1840’s, railing against him and his kind for cursing Ireland, intent on killing him or hurting him or bargaining with him. A few times, a dazed and confused army men would stumble across his path, the burning remnants of their crashed airplane smoking in the distance.

Once, he met a Viking woman with one eye, her hair plated in braids, her jaw clenched, her eye bright. She clenched a spear in one white-knuckled hand, but stared him down with courage. She asked him for the favor of the fae to end a clan war that had been going on for ages, blood soaking the stones beneath her feet. Out of the many who came to him, she was one of the only ones he let see the Queen.

Less often, it was people from his time—the fae were relegated more and more to superstition as the world modernized, and less and less people asked them for help. Draco preferred it that way. Fewer people who could recognize him. He knew the ancient magic was already mechanizing, slowly easing its way through people’s memories, altering them, making him blurry, insubstantial, forgettable. It wouldn’t be complete yet, so soon, and the ones he knew well would hardly be affected. But he didn’t want to be reminded, nonetheless.

What was hard for him was that it wasn’t all bad. The things he’d seen already, the places he’d been, the people he’d met was more than any one lifetime—merited, of course, by the lack of time passing. Though he needed to stay near wooded areas now, as the call of the forest was too great to venture far outwards, he’d been to many different times and places, seen majestic palaces and beautiful landscapes. He once even thought he saw Merlin himself, beside King Arthur, though he hadn’t dared approach them.

And his redheaded friend, the woman in a similar position to his own, had already taught him many things about the forest and about himself. She hadn’t been born fae, she’d revealed, but had become a sort of indentured servant, though for what she hadn’t said. She’d been there a long time, though, or as long as time could be in the forts—so much so that much of her humanity was lost in a liminal space between two species, almost there but not quite. She taught him how to feel the forest, how to sense great and small magicks, how to draw strength from his environment—all things he hadn’t quite mastered yet, and would not as soon as he would have liked. Despite all the rigor and numbness of his life with the fae, the call of the power available to him was undeniable and intoxicating. Draco had always worshipped and feared power, subjugated it far within himself and trembled before those who didn’t, but now he felt as though he was worthy to wield it himself, if only he could learn how to.

So he wandered through the forest, lost in thought and wondering what would be revealed to him this time, called from deep within.  

He did not expect to find Harry Potter pacing through the trees, a scowl on his face and a cursed pendant around his neck.

Draco stood stock still in shock, hidden in the underbrush, pressed against the bark of a tree twice his width. He watched him with wide eyes, sensing the bountiful and precious magic within him, repulsed at the darkness on the chain around his neck.

His hair was longer than Draco remembered, and scraggly with too many cleaning charms. Stubble shadowed his jaw. His clothes were dirty and threadbare from being spelled clean without water. His cheeks were gaunt, his eyes shadowed and underscored by heavy bags. He was much too thin, but despite that, he’d grown inches. He walked with an uncoordinated gait, like a foal trying to use their legs—he walked as though he was still as short as he had been, unsure what to do now with the extra height he’d been given.

 _He must have just had a growth spurt_ , Draco thought absently, amazed that anything could grow under conditions such as the war.

 _Why is he here?_ raced through Draco’s head. _Why is he unwell—why is he wearing_ that _?_

Draco’s fingers itched with the need to rip that pendent off Harry’s neck and fling it far, far away. It felt like rot, like a festering parasite clinging to Harry, and it set Draco’s teeth on edge. But he couldn’t more.

Harry would still recognize him, he knew.

He was unsure where to go from here, feeling torn open and vulnerable. He pressed himself closer into the tree, fearing that Harry would see him—pleading that Harry would see him.

He couldn’t bring Harry back with him. He wanted him, wanted to give him everything he’d manipulated the others with, his time, his sex, his love. Because he could have loved Harry, he realized, given the chance. Of course he could have - what sort of heartless person wouldn't love Harry, after winning his affections? 

That fact hit him now in the way his gut twisted and his breath left him like a punch at the sight of Harry’s face. He still wanted to love him, even though he wasn't sure what a thing like that was supposed to be like, even though he knew that Harry, if he ever had, could never love him again. Not after the way he’d disappeared.

He pressed his forehead to the tree, not caring about the pain as he felt the bark press into his skin. _I should go. I should leave. He can’t see me. I need to leave, now, now, now—_

Harry was staring at him.

Draco blinked and met his eyes, his lungs empty and stomach upset from worry. Harry’s wand was up and pointed at him before he could react.

Draco stared at it until he went nearly cross-eyed. He hadn’t used his wand since entering the forest. He hadn’t needed it, though he carried it with him as a reminder. Sometimes, when midnight drew them in close, he would feel it in his pocket and try to remember who he used to be.

“Who are you?” Harry growled, his voice deep and furious, rage flashing in his eyes and settling in his features. “Who the _hell_ are you?”

 “Draco,” the blond managed through parched lips and a dry mouth, clutching the bark of the tree. He knew he would be angry. And of course he would be suspicious—for all the insults Draco had shot at him over the years, he knew he wasn’t truly as stupid as his hair suggested.

No matter what Harry did, Draco resolved not to hurt him. He had hurt too many strangers. He wouldn’t hurt the people he cared about any more than he already had.

Harry gritted his teeth and strode towards him, keeping his wand pointed right at Draco’s face the whole time. Or, the person who looked like Draco. It couldn’t possibly be him. He’d disappeared ages ago. Dumbledore said it was part of his responsibilities as a spy, but Harry doubted that. He wouldn’t have left him if he’d had a choice, not without a word, a hint, an inkling. Someone must have found out about him, a Death Eater or Voldemort himself.  And even though Harry would never let himself think about it, in the back of his mind, images of Draco hurt, tortured, and dying had haunted him for months.

Now whoever this was stood here taunting him, having found him somehow, looking far to healthy and far too pristine to be Draco. This man didn’t look like he’d been tortured for months. He looked like Draco, but slightly different—he looked like the Draco from Harry’s fantasies and dreams, the ones where they were still at Hogwarts and neither was dying. He looked like Draco without the gangly teenage limbs and pointy features he was still growing into. 

He looked like Draco with flawless skin and lustrous hair, enough sleep and enough food. The only thing unchanged about him was his eyes, still that dark, serious, stormy grey. But eyes only did so much, and everyone was troubled during a war. That brooding look was present on everyone’s faces, Death Eater, civilian, or Chosen One alike. 

“Prove it,” Harry forced through gritted teeth. How dare they. How _dare_ Voldemort find this out and use it against him. He had taken everything else, even Harry’s mind. He may have even found out about Draco from Harry, though he’d tried his best with Occlumency. And that knowledge just made him even angrier, even more saturated with helpless rage—he could have been the one to hurt Draco, to kill him, maybe—even if it wasn’t by his hand, it was his fault.

Draco stared at Harry, so full of anger. If Draco was moral, he would save the hundreds of other lives he no doubt was going to ruin with the Queen and just let Harry kill him now. But he couldn’t do that. He still ran from death, chased like a fox from a hound. And he knew he couldn’t force Harry to do something like that, not after everything they’d shared.

“You have a scar on your left thigh from a fight with your cousin when you were eight,” Draco said quietly. “And you can see with your right eye better than your left, though you’re terribly blind in both. I found that out when I was trying to mock you that day we snuck into the empty Arithmancy classroom and put your glasses on. I had a headache for ages afterwards.”

His words were like cold water to Harry, shock enough to almost make him lower his wand. But if Voldemort could see into his head, wouldn’t he know this? How could he know what to do?

“How did you find me?” Harry asked hoarsely.

Draco shrugged helplessly, shaking his head. “I let the forest guide me.”

Harry scowled. “ _How_?”

“It’s old magic,” Draco said through pursed lips and a clenched jaw. His head was starting to hurt from the strain of speaking clearly. Within the forest, having lived with the fae and only talking to humans when purposefully trying to befuddle and misguide them, he was out of practice and he knew it. His impulse was also made hundreds of times stronger by the anxiety he felt, being with Harry for the first time again.

Harry shook his head, keeping his eyes trained on Draco. “You can’t be real,” he murmured in awe and suspicion.

Draco bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood. _Nothing ever is_ , he thought. _Real, réel, reel, reeling down, the forest pulls everyone to the ground. Through the fairy mound, the dirt and stone and skin and bone, a home of—_

Harry was holding the pendent in his free hand, the darkness of it screeching and writhing and twisting like a living being, which Draco supposed it was, to some extent. However _alive_ a Horcrux could really be. He was staring at it hard, scrutinizing it.

Draco said nothing, though inside he screamed to _take it off, please take it off_! The darkness of it pained him, and it hurt him knowing that it was so close to Harry, that it was touching Harry’s skin when it should have been under lockdown more secure than toxic waste. He knew that would only make Harry suspicious. Though again, maybe that would be for the better, if he hexed him and left and thought nothing of it—that way he could just tell the Queen he failed, that he’d found no one today., and then go out and get someone else tomorrow, or the next day. Time was but an illusion in the fort, after all.

Slowly, still keeping a suspicious eye on Draco, he lowered his wand incrementally and reached up to undo the chain’s clasp, every movement calculated and deliberate, all his muscles tense for an attack.

He removed the pendant and set it on the log beside them. He took a step away from it and continued to eye Draco, though everything about him seemed to relax more. Even his face lost some of the heavy lines that marred his brow and had settled to the corners of his mouth.

“Tell me something else,” he demanded.

“The Dark Lord wanted me to kill Dumbledore,” Draco said, ignoring the swift inhale Harry took, uncovering a secret that he had never told anyone but the Professor himself. The Unbreakable Vow was only ever meant for witches and wizards—it had no bearing on magical creatures, and so once Draco accepted his inheritance, the Vow was very much breakable to him. “I told him the first time I met him. He knew. We had it planned out—I needed to do it to show my devotion, and if I couldn’t, Severus would—but I—” Draco swallowed. This was the part he’d had trouble admitting to himself, the reason why he’d allowed himself to let go those few weeks too soon. “I couldn’t do it,” he admitted. “I had to go.”

He was such a coward. He thought of himself only a few months ago and wondered if he would ever muster up that fear of violence again. In the time between he may not have killed anyone with his own magic, but he had lured them to their deaths, to their misery. He had become the monster he feared.

“You could have told me,” Harry said hoarsely, and that’s how Draco knew he was getting through to him.

Draco shook his head. “I couldn’t have,” he replied. “You couldn’t know—you would have tried to stop it, Harry. You couldn’t stop it.”

He shook his head helplessly, but didn’t disagree. “Where have you been?”

Draco closed his eyes and reached deep within himself for strength. “The depths of the earth,” he said. “Above ground and under it, where the night is long with the shadows but there is no time to move the moon.”

“What?” Harry looked completely bemused.

“I—I can’t talk about it clearly. It’s—I’m sorry, Harry.” He had to cut himself off every few words when the urge to riddle overwhelmed him, the protective magic of the forest and its creatures overcoming him. “I can t-try again, but I—” He caught his breath again, frustrated. 

Harry’s jaw was clenched again, staring at him. “You’re not real,” he said with conviction.

And so Draco, desperate to get through to him even though he knew he should just leave him be, desperate to see him and feel him and have him again so that he could feel like a real person again, instead of this terrible thing he was, desperate to hope just for a moment that someone would help him, used his magic.

He pushed his way into Harry’s mind and shared with him what he could, those things that didn’t get foggy and muddled when he tried to convey them like the courts and the Queen.

He showed Harry bits of his childhood, of Lucius, of Narcissa. He showed Harry how he’d been sickly and lonely. He showed him that first day off the train at Hogwarts, reaching his hand out, and the hurt he’d felt at being rejected. He showed him the Dark Lord. He showed him the pride on his father’s face as he brought him to the Marking ceremony like a lamb to the slaughter. He showed him the pain, the terror, the fever.

He showed Harry himself. He showed him how they started and where they went from there. He showed him his rage and frustration and affection and anxiety, his panic and overwhelm, his numbness and fear. He showed Harry everything, down to the last tear he shed when Harry left that night.

He even showed Harry his last conversation with his mother, the most precious of all of his memories.  He had to convince him of who he really was, at least for that little while when he could still recognize him, before the ancient magic took over and erased him from existence.

Harry’s eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted, breathing fast as he processed all the information Draco had thrown at him.  Draco shied away from his gaze as it began to refocus, feeling raw and overexposed, unable to look at him. He felt bare, and it hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, his voice quiet, retreating back to the shadows of the trees, intending to leave. “I’ll—I should—”

Harry covered the distance between them in three strides, and kissed him with all the passion Draco wasn’t able to feel anymore.

 


	11. Chapter 11

Between kisses, Harry tried to convince him to return to the camp with him, to stay with them, to live in their tents and eat their food and just be _safe_ , as safe as they could be in the hell of the world. Every time, Draco changed the subject.

Finding Harry didn’t change anything. He was still at the Queen’s mercy. And he couldn’t meet Weasley or Granger—he could let one person go, but to let three slip through his fingers was too much. She might even think his little reunion with Harry was amusing in that cruel way the fae had, but her patience would only stretch so far.

Harry had him against the tree he’d been hiding behind, his arms around his neck, the bark cutting into his back. Draco relished every sensation, even the discomfort, because it meant he finally got to feel something. The heat of Harry’s mouth, the strength in his hands, the desperation in his kiss…it was all so glorious.

They kissed until the shadows elongated and the night creatures started making noise.

“I have to go,” Draco mumbled into his ear, and Harry stiffened.

“No,” he argued, clutching his shirt, his arms tightening around him. “Where?” His eyes flashed wildly. Suspicion flitted across his face once more, much to Draco’s chagrin. “Does Voldemort know you’re here?”

“No,” Draco said. “It’s not him.”

“Who is it?”He scowled as Draco shook his head. “Tell me, Draco.”

Draco pulled his head back, _thunk_ ing it against the bark of the tree just hard enough to sting. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. “Can’t,” he managed through gritted teeth.

Harry’s fingers had tightened around his shoulders now, almost painful. He looked so frustrated. _“Why?”_ he asked.

“They’re not—she’s not—” Draco gasped, and then, to his immense frustration, strings of riddles and sing-song phrases poured from his lips. “Ugh, fuck! Fuck, fuck!”

Harry looked alarmed, his green eyes wide behind his glasses. “Have you been cursed? A Vow, or something like it?”

“Something like it,” Draco rasped tiredly. He turned his attention to the necklace, still beside them. “You need to destroy that.”

Harry quirked an eyebrow. “Do you know what it is?”

“It’s Dark,” Draco replied. “It’s not good for you. It damages you. Do you wear it all the time?”

“Ron and Hermione and I switch off,” Harry said.

Draco nodded slowly. He wasn’t sure if he could help—he knew that magical creatures had properties which could override some Dark magic, but he wasn’t sure how to go about it. His instincts were not yet honed enough to do these sorts of things naturally. One thing he did know, though, was that his magic was strongest at the new moon—a rebirth or sorts, he supposed. A parallel between the planets and himself, nature and his state.

“I will help you later,” he resolved.

“When?” Harry asked. “Don’t leave. Stay here, Draco, please.”

Draco kissed him. And then, the Queen called him back.

Distantly, Draco thought he could hear a frustrated yell, far away in the forest.

 

_*_

 

The next time Draco got called back, he could feel Harry’s anger before he saw him. It was buzzing and cloying, but alone, untainted by the necklace. He was pacing between the trees, scowling murderously at the ground, and Draco wasn’t sure what to do.

The fae and the forest were two different sides of the same coin; it was his environment. His home. It didn’t betray him unless he wanted it to. And just then, he didn’t want it to.

He had had a rough time, however long he’d been out. He’d snuck a man about his age in and out of time, unbeknownst to the victim himself. The Queen liked to look upon these things and laugh, but Draco had tried his best to ease it for him. A hundred years difference, but it was a better time and place he was moved to—he was a soldier, he’d be resilient, Draco hoped.

It pained him to do things like this. He liked much better being the bargainer, having people come to him and ask his favor. He’d tried to talk to the redheaded woman about it, the one whose name he didn’t know and probably never would. Names were tricky things in the forest. Tell the wrong sort and they’d hold powerful magic over you.

She hadn’t been as receptive as he’d hoped. “We do what we have to,” she’d told him. “Endure.”

That seemed to be all his life was fit for, endurance.

He was in a bad state, that day. Angry and sorrowful and in need of someone, just please, Harry…

But he couldn’t do that to him, as he watched Harry pace around the forest floor. Hunting horcruxes, dealing with the bits and pieces of himself Voldemort had spread throughout the world…Draco couldn’t do that to him. He couldn’t force his helplessness or his need on him like that, not when Harry had so much else to do, so many more pressing things to think about.

Draco would be here. He would always be here.

Time meant nothing in the forest.

He could wait.

 

_*_

 

Draco had started calling her Rouquine because it was easier than going by no name. She had asked why and he had told her it was for her hair. She did not give him a name—she had long lost the use of them, she said. Names belonged to a world she no longer belonged to. But she let him use the one he’d given to her, for reasons Draco didn’t know yet.

After he came back to the fort, after seeing Harry, she knew. “Do you love him?” she asked, knowing what had trespassed, the way the forest knew. “The one you saw today?”

Draco stared at the ground for a long time and didn’t answer. He didn’t need to ask how she knew—they had similar operations, the two of them. They were out in the forest more than any of the fae were, rarely spending time in the forts except for nights. They sensed when the forest waned to reveal things and when it did not—it was not a choice left up to them. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted softly.

She nodded in silence and sat with him for many moments, just staring at the forest before them. “Make him leave, then,” she said eventually. “Better away than with the Queen.”

Draco hummed in agreement, though he couldn’t speak right then.

“It does no good to dwell on them,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder and rubbing it lightly.

“I know,” he replied, his head dropping to his hands. “I wish…”

“Wishing does you no good here, love,” she said, kissing the side of his head and standing. “Were there no more a godless place than this.”

He was left alone with his thoughts for too long a time after that.

 

_*_

 

The next time the forest lead him to Harry, he believed he had a plan. Rouquine had helped him out quite a lot, though at first she’d balked at such Dark magic.

“You’re very young, child,” she warned. “Even raised fae, your magic wouldn’t yet be full.”

“I have to help him,” Draco insisted, and so she helped him against her better judgment.

He had learned more with her than he thought possible. He never asked how old she was—it would be useless, in the strange nonexistent current of the fort, to try to guess. Certainly older than him. Older than many.

His abilities had grown far above what they had been. He could sense the forest creatures and the plants, could see in the dark, could hear longer and farther than before. He knew this was because his magic was finally realizing itself, humming with life.

He could sense a thunderstorm before it swooped in, feel lightening before it struck. It wasn’t just that he knew it was there, but that he felt it in his bones, in his blood. It was part of him. Every jolt of electricity from the clouds to the earth pulsed through his heart. Every gust of wind through the forest was the air in his lungs.

He was well and truly becoming a part of the forest, and it was a beautiful, terrible thing. He could feel the strength in his limbs that had always evaded him, an awareness that had always been obscured by fog and exhaustion. It gave him clarity to a great many things.

Including what to do about the necklace.

The next time the forest lead him to him, Harry wasn’t angry. Instead, resignation and sadness tinged the air around him. And with Draco’s training, grace a Rouquine, he could sense something else too, and froze.

It was faint, and it was probably just from the necklace. Yes, that’s what it was. Harry was wearing the necklace, he could see the lump of it beneath his shirt, so that would make sense. That had to be the explanation. That screaming, writhing dark thing, it was only the necklace.

Draco’s magic bent and flickered, affected by the surges of emotion and panic he felt, and Harry saw it. Turning towards the movement in the air, Harry’s gaze locked with Draco’s. Harry’s jaw dropped while Draco tried to compose his expression into something less than the abject horror he felt building.

“You’re back,” Harry breathed, eyes widening behind his smudged glasses, stepping towards Draco and reaching out his hands.

Draco’s chest ached. He wanted to be held so badly, to be hidden away and kept safe by someone who actually cared about him. He wanted to whisk Harry away like only the fae could and keep him from this hellish, war torn place. But he couldn’t. He had a job to do. Harry had a job to do. They both had obligations.

“I can fix that,” Draco said, gesturing to the necklace tucked into Harry's shirt. “I can destroy it for you.”

Harry took it off from around his neck with little prompting, looking relieved to have any excuse to not wear it. He made like he was going to hand it to Draco, but hesitated.

“Are you nervous?” Draco asked softly, trying not to show that he was a little stung by Harry’s recalcitrance. After all, he was almost a Death Eater, and that little necklace had a bit of the Dark Lord’s soul in it—he could feel it writhing there, now that he had the training.  

“I talked to Hermione,” Harry began, scrutinizing him with inquisitive eyes. “About you.”

“Yes?” Draco asked cautiously.

“It was strange—it took her a moment to remember you. She did eventually, with prompting. Hermione is sharp as a knife, she never forgets much. And she especially wouldn’t forget you.”

Draco nodded slowly, his eyes trained on Harry’s face. He felt the pull of his fae magic, trying to draw him father in the woods, away from this. He knew that Harry knew something—and to the fae, anything could be too much.

“She thought about it a long while, and mentioned something she’d read about once, in a very old book. Seamus was the one who gave it to her.”

“Harry—” It was difficult to force his jaw and tongue to work, and when they did, his voice came out cracking. “Please. I don’t—”

“They’ve taken you,” Harry said, a statement, not a question. His stare was intense with emotion, though Draco couldn’t quite figure out which.

Draco let out a hoarse noise, a small rasp, and his magic surged. His nature magic, his wildness, wrapped around him, kicked up like dust in a tornado, urging him to run, to flee, to get away because this was too close, too much. But what he could control fought it, this overwhelming urge, because this was Harry. He needed to be here for Harry.

Harry, the boy with the screaming, seething necklace. The boy who Draco worried might be more insidious than just a boy—something he had never meant to be. Something that had darkness far too akin to that of the locket suspended between them. 

Instead of running, he reached out swiftly, the necklace lying directly in the palm of his hand. When it touched his skin, the sensation of being submerged in ice water crashed over him in agonizing shivers, as well as fear, frustration, and rage, so much rage it was palpable, and Draco couldn’t breathe around it.

There was no spell or incantation for what Draco had to do, just sheer force. He allowed himself to direct the flow of his magic in the distant way that a road directs traffic, or a bank directs a stream--a gateway, and nothing more. He reached out spindly fingers to the energy around him, to the wild magic of the forest teeming in its inhabitants, and teased away a bit here, a bit there, siphoning what he could from the ancient beings who resided there.

He spun it around the locket, the darkness within it slowly obscured by the untamable magic of the forest and its People.

Closer and closer he spun the web, denser and denser. He felt the pressure build. His head was spinning with power. His limbs were shaking. He was burning with fever and yet wracked with chills. He felt as though he was floating above himself, above Harry, floating away from everything he knew. He was part of the wind and the sky and the water and the trees. He was everything and nothing at once, and nearly lost himself in it.  

He wondered if this was what a sort of end felt like for the fae. He thought it was too peaceful to be true.

And then, with a faint _pop_ , everything went black.


	12. Chapter 12

Rouquine had helped him back to the little part of the fort they inhabited. When he woke up, he was in his own space, lying in his own bed. He tried to sit up, but his head swam and pounded, and when Rouquine entered the room, she pushed him back down.

“That was too much,” she scolded, scowling irascibly. “If I had known you were going to attempt something so foolish, I would never have agreed to teach you anything.”

Draco gave her a small shrug. “I had to help him,” he said.

She sighed. “I know,” she relented, but the line was still between her eyebrows. “If I met someone to me as he is to you, I wouldn’t be able to stay away from them, either.”

“You might,” Draco offered. But she shook her head.

“No,” she replied. “Mine was given his chance already.” She fixed the blankets around him. “Rest. You’ll have a headache worse than your worst hangover for the next few days. Try to sleep while your stomach doesn’t feel like it’s turning itself inside out. Magic sickness is nothing to trifle with, child.”

“We’re nearly the same age,” Draco protested, and she laughed.

“In time, we are,” she said affably. “Out of it I am much your elder. Sleep, love. There’s nothing else you have to do.”

So that’s what he did.

 

_*_

 

The next time he saw Harry, he knew months must have passed. He could see it in Harry’s face.

They were still in the forest—by now, he knew he couldn’t leave, not as he was. Sometimes, some fae had the ability to exit the forest when not in their true form, something he and Rouquine were working on. She already had the ability, becoming a beautiful, sleek ginger cat, but he was still struggling. Like all things, he found it difficult to let go. He would get it eventually, though. He had all the time in the world.

An eternity, and seven years. Rouquine had mentioned something, something distant and perhaps impossible, but a chance, nonetheless. A hope to cling to of escape—of if not returning to his life, then creating a new one, without the Queen. But now wasn’t the time. Not when he hd years ahead of him, and Harry either had minutes or a lifetime.

Harry looked haggard and haunted. He walked through the forest, straight-backed and eyes unseeing, focused on some great goal far beyond them.

Draco was one with the trees as Harry met his dead, watching in awe as the resurrection stone did its work. Sadness welled in him as he watched Harry, surrounded by this plethora of people. And that was when Draco knew, with a terrible sinking feeling, like a fall from a fifty-foot broomstick, that they were all waiting for Harry to join them.

Draco could sense others in the forest. The festering darkness of their presences was unbearably familiar. There was one bright spot in the crowd shrouded by the shadows of the forest, the one woman he loved, wholly and unconditionally.

Draco did not know if she still remembered him enough to love him.

The forest had helpfully consolidated everyone he ever may have loved into one square mile, and neither of them knew his name.

Draco could feel the familiar beginnings of a panic attack and tried valiantly to quell his ragged breathing as it tore from his throat, the dizzying sports of red, yellow and black that kept appearing in his vision, the nausea like seasickness as his anxiety yanked him to and fro. He couldn’t let it beat him. He needed to be here. The forest had brought both him and Harry here, and he had sacrificed too much to lose someone now.

Draco did not know what was about to happen, not like Harry did. He didn’t know why Harry was alone, and not flanked by the loyal two-thirds of his trio. Draco could feel the cold sweat drying uncomfortably, the air still sluggish in his lungs. He could feel his magic pulse through him with his heartbeat, and that was the only thing he knew for sure.

He would help Harry how he could. If he could. In the forest, in his home, he would only be seen by those who he wanted to reveal himself to. And so to everyone but the two people he wanted, he would not exist.

 

_*_

 

As Harry left his family behind, he was confronted by a figure nearly as spectral. His white skin, silvery-blonde hair, and sharp silver eyes made him look ethereal. Something far away tugged the back of Harry’s memory, dragging his mind from the skeletal fingers of the fate he was about to face. He looked like a man, but Harry could sense the magic around him, and it was like nothing he’d ever felt before.

“I…do I know you?” he asked softly, thinking maybe this was another one of his ghosts, someone—yet another person—who had sacrificed for him.

Draco looked into those uncomprehending green eyes and knew, as he stared, that he had well and truly become one of the fae.

“You used to,” he replied quietly, moving through the trees like the wind, without substance, his presence a subtle, almost unknowable thing. He knew he shouldn’t, but his hand moved almost at its own accord, reaching to cup Harry’s cheek, soft as the breeze which swayed the brittle leaves above them.

“Are you a ghost?” Harry asked in wonder.

Draco smiled without mirth, a sickly twitch of the lips that didn’t reach his eyes. “As good as,” he said slowly. “But you’re not, Harry.” 

The fae live within and without of time. Rouquine was good at manipulating it—Draco was not, stuck as he was still thinking it moved in a linear current, instead of the scribble it was. She knew a great many things that would never come to pass, though she never told Draco what would happen—she said he was still too close for that knowledge. Instead, she gave him suggestions. Which is why Draco pressed a length of hawthorn, his old, unusable wand, to Harry’s hand.

“Hide this,” he said. “You might have need of it.”

Harry scrutinized him, still befuddled. “How do you know? And how would this—wands need to be won.”

“You’ve already won this,” Draco said. It was not truly his the moment he renounced his humanity, and it belonged to Harry - not all belonging was won in the heat of a duel. Some was won in the quiet whispers in a still room, with gentle fingers in soft hair, warm words and warmer eyes. But Draco couldn't think about that, not right now. 

He continued, “As you will win this next battle, if you wish.” It wasn’t fact, he knew, but he would try his hardest to make it so. The forest was his home—it was part of him. He could make it fight, if he so willed it to. At least, until the Queen stopped him.

Harry’s expression became stony and resolute. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “What sort of creature are you?”

“The sort who is trying to help you,” Draco implored. What he really wanted to do was let the forest lose around them and take Harry out of time and place, somewhere safe, somewhere far away. Perhaps Wales—nothing ever seemed to happen in Wales. Perhaps Wales two centuries in the past, long before Voldemort. That was Draco’s preferred plan. But then, Draco had never been particularly brave, he knew. He’d only done the things he’d done out of desperation, and no small amount of panic attacks in between. Harry was different. Harry wouldn’t run. He was too good a person for that, too kind, too selfless.

Which is why, instead of running, Draco asked, “Will you let me?”

“I…” Harry took a deep breath, looking into this strange man’s face. He was more like a teenager really, with the same lost yet solemn, stubborn look Harry had reflected.  

He grit his jaw, and made a decision. “Yes.”

Draco nodded. “Go, then,” he said curtly, moving out of Harry’s way. He was afraid to say too much, and so he choked on his words. _Before I take you away from here._ “I’ll help you as I can.”

Harry stepped forward, but hesitated, turning his searching gaze on Draco once more. “Who are you?”

Steeling himself, Draco leaned forward. Harry didn’t move away, still looking at Draco in that determined, confused way. Draco took that as permission, and brushed the ghost of a kiss on Harry’s lips.

“I gave my name away,” he said, his lips a hard, thin line. “I'll be with you. Go.”

Draco followed Harry through the forest. He felt a pang when he saw his mother standing amongst the Death Eaters, swathed in black. He watched as the Dark Lord, the pompous fool, lauded himself and his followers for the defeat of Harry Potter soon to come. Draco watched as he prepared to strike down a child, a martyr with more responsibility placed on his shoulders than any teenager had a right to bear.

Draco drew the forest to him, all its magic and fervor and wild will, and held his breath, the forest a mountain around them, waiting for the exact moment to bring it all crashing down.

In a flash of green, Harry Potter died.

From the forest, Draco _pushed_ with all his might, fearing that he was already too late.

Time seemed to stop as Harry’s body fell. It seemed to become viscous and cloying, different from when he was in the fort—there, it was nothing, but here it was everywhere, crushing, asphyxiating. And of course, death was here, too.

Death had that certain horrible magic, the sort that erased all others. The terrible void and nothingness of it—it left a vacuum. In that vacuum, Draco hurled all of his magic, and when his ran out, he took some more.

 _I can’t lose him_.

Draco tore the forest’s magic from its ley lines and poured it all into the prone form on the ground, barreling down in an avalanche of thunderous power. That fading spark, that dying ember—he had to keep it burning, just enough. Just so much that if Harry wanted to, he could have a choice. If he wanted to, he could do what Draco would never be able to do.

If he wanted to, he could return.

It felt like Draco was tearing himself apart, funneling so much dense, burning magic through him. It lasted seconds—it lasted an eternity. But then he felt something flutter. A pulse, where there was none. A choice that had been made.

Harry Potter was dead, until he wasn’t.

Draco collapsed onto the forest floor, his legs unable to support him, completely drained. His breathing was labored; his limbs were heavy. He caught sight of his hair in the corner of his eye, a frizzled grey instead of the gleaming silver-blonde it had been.

He blinked, his vision hazy and clouded with spots, as the woman he sacrificed everything to protect knelt over the boy he had nearly destroyed himself to save.

Suddenly he was five again, and she was holding him through a nightmare. He was clinging to her skirts at a ball, her heels clicking across the marble floor, as towering and elegant as a statue. She was hugging him, back home from his first term at Hogwarts, elated he was back, so _proud_ of him. That last hazy summer, while things were starting to fall apart but nobody said anything, and they would just sit together in the garden, the one she worked so hard to keep up, just being together for hours

He saw her, and it nearly ruined him, how much he loved her. It stripped him of all the anger and fury and determination that had brought him here, and tore him down to the miserable, terrified child he was.

“Mum,” he rasped, and, miraculously, she looked up. Their eyes met and Draco nearly shied away, unable to bear the blankness he knew he would see there.

But it wasn’t. In her blue eyes, recognition flared. It was distant until it wasn’t, and then it was a cold fire, trained on his face. Her expression didn't change. Through and through she was a Black, but he knew. In her eyes, he saw she knew too.

“Please, mum,” he croaked, his voice crackling with strain, his vision swimming with tears and starbursts of red and black. She was the only one who could see him—she was the only one who could hear him. The forest helped its People, as it helped Draco now. “I love you both.”

Her eyes still locked on his, the Dark Lord’s imperious question bounced off the tension between them, distant and distorted as though heard from underwater. 

There was a wordless plea in her eyes as she kept them trained on her only son. Narcissa stood, wishing she could do something more for him, wishing she could save him. But she couldn’t. There was only one boy she could save here today, and it was not the one she loved.

“He’s dead,” she breathed, her expression serene, not betraying the storm which gathered beneath. Her stare was more profound than the depths of the ocean as her eyes bore into Draco, tracing the lines of his face, memorizing him before he was whisked away once again, taken by the fae, never to return.

The fury and finality in Narcissa's voice was ice as she repeated - 

“He’s _dead_.”

The Dark Lord rejoiced.


	13. Chapter 13

Draco had one more task to complete before he could return to the Queen. One task to complete before the night was at its end.  
It was a task that would solidify his allegiance with her. A task that would mark him as her true servant. A horrible thing, full of pain and destruction—but Draco could do it, because he knew who would be involved.

They were deep in the forest, taking care to avoid the centaurs and the spiders, circling the castle and preparing to strike. The Queen wanted him to prove that he was no longer human. She knew how he struggled with luring people into the woods, especially during the festivals of the forts. But tonight was as good a time as any to hold one, and with the chaos of the war around them, no one would notice a few missing parties here or there.

Draco was trying to pick them off, selecting the groups of people he'd been forced to live with, the most despicable human beings he could think of. Draco manipulated the magic of the forest to draw them in, convincing them they needed cover or could sneak up on their unsuspecting enemies through the underbrush. The Queen knew that Draco was making a choice between his humanity and her--she didn't seem to realize that in doing so he had found a way to better his personal efforts in the war as well.  
Lucius’ voice rang in his ears. Always look for an angle, he would say. Well, now he finally could see one. With his father stowed away in Azkaban, not enough of an asset to the Dark Lord after his son disappeared, Draco had no reservations. What he was about to do was necessary for myriad reasons. He recalled that a very prominent one of them, in particular when he felt Greyback’s presence in the woods, was revenge.

That foul creature had terrorized Draco through the halls of the Manor, breathing down his neck, laughing at the way he trembled, bearing his yellowed teeth. He liked to threaten Draco, saying that the Dark Lord would hand him over to join his lupine masses if he failed, or maybe even just as a little appetizer before they went after Potter. Draco hated the way he had leered at his mother, filling with cold terror and rage, knowing that the only reason he’d never done anything was fear from the Dark Lord himself.

Draco did not usually enjoy gruesome celebrations like the one he was about to orchestrate, but he thought he could certainly enjoy this.

Though Draco found Greyback and many of his disciples, that terrible man Dolohov was sadly not present- for whom Draco harbored another grudge, mainly induced from the inordinate amount of pleasure he got in torturing Draco to "build his character".

In addition to the werewolves, there were many of the Dark Lord's Death Eaters veering around back to take the castle. It was a foolish move, venturing through the forest. But it was their only one available—Crabbe and Goyle were nowhere near as magically dexterous as Draco, and though they had managed to find ways into the castle for some, they hadn’t managed to fix the Vanishing Cabinet as the Dark Lord had wanted. Because of this, neither of them took his Mark, which Draco knew was more of a blessing than they could comprehend.

Deep in the forest, Draco weaved a labyrinth around this group and others, showing them landmarks or mirages to twist and turn their path, making them believe they were right upon the castle when in fact they were wandering into deeper, denser, wilder territory.

The Queen was having a party, tonight. She wanted guests, and she would have them.

As the moon rose, the fae began to dance. Draco could feel their regular footsteps shaking the earth; he could feel the trees teem with magic. Even the air became viscous with the power that thrummed through it.

One of Greyback’s younger ranks was the first to sense something was wrong, and Draco silenced him swiftly, pulling him into the fort with strong branches and tough thorns. The young werewolf danced with the beautiful fae, distracted by their loveliness, wondering distantly where it was he had so urgently been trying to go.

Draco picked them off, one by one, until only the most stalwart of the group remained. And when they turned around to see that no one else was there, Draco took them, too.

They danced with the fae, scores of them, witches and wizards and werewolves alike, twisting and turning and spinning in a ferocious, intoxicated fervor. They danced under the light of the moon until their feet bled. Their hands and fingers were cut and torn from the nails of the Good Folk as they held them through spins and dips—gashes appeared on their hips and backs as they were ripped from one partner to the next. But of course, none of them noticed, so taken with the atmosphere, the power, the magic. They never noticed, until it was too late. Draco knew.

The music was beautiful, elegant, enticing. Made from the purest of violins. The beautiful music overpowered the screams of those trodden upon on the forest floor as they fell from exhaustion. And still the night wore on.

The forest ran red with wine and blood. The taken screamed with pleasure and writhed in agony. And the fae smiled as they danced.

Draco looked to the moon through the branches of the trees high above. He felt the strength returning to his limbs, flowing from the dying beneath his feet as he stepped and spun, seeping back into his bones. He felt full of life and vigor.

He felt indomitable.

He felt immortal.

And he laughed.

Rouqine watched from the shadows, her red hair wild around her, her jaw shut tight, the muscles jumping from the stress of her disapproval. She was the only still creature in a flurry of movement.

She knew the road ahead for her friend would be difficult. But she also knew he had one single, small glimmer of hope. She knew it, because she had had it once. And then, she hadn't.

She hoped his didn't get taken away, as hers had.

But there was nothing to do now but wait. And so she stayed in the shadows, watching. 

For Draco, for now, there was no going back.

He knew who he was.

Not a Death Eater. Not a Malfoy. Not even Narcissa's son. 

For now, he belonged to the Queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright folks! 
> 
> So that concludes the first book of the two-part story! I'll come out with the first chapter of the next one soon, called "In the Bright Moonlight". It'll be mostly centering around Harry, instead of Draco. It's set seven years after the Final Battle, so Harry and Draco are about 24 (though Draco's age is unknown, really, because of the time flux in the forts). I'm thinking it'll probably be about the same length as this part. Stay tuned!
> 
> Much love and thanks for all the lovely comments and reviews! I love reading them <3


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